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Every time when I'm doing a math expression my brain shuts down and goes like this: "Ok, this multiplied by this is 6.....(after 4 minutes).....3? No, I'm probably wrong."
Mental math is not math, it is just computation. Computation has little to do with mathematics. Calling mental math "math" is like calling "youtubing" real job. PS. I do love math and don't have math anxiety and sometimes zone out by mental math especially before sleeping which helps me relax but I still do consider mental math as little more than musings like rubics cube solving sport. Not real math.
Yeah definitely bad teacher, lol. Turns out I have a learning disability (if you want to call it that) where I can't memorize beyond a certain point. I understand the material, can do the tests, but can't memorize. I'm a music major, you can imagine how that worked out!
When children are taught that fast mental math is being successful in maths (think of the “60 seconds” quizzes) and that you can’t be wrong (the insistence on having high grades or you get scolded/punished), it’s no wonder that people have math anxiety
I agree that it’s ridiculous to think that speed is equal to success. But fast mental math absolutely helps you to be successful in math. It allows you focus more on the underlying concepts, so the tedium of solving simple algebraic equations, expanding/factoring expressions, rearranging terms, etc. can all happen in the background. I teach high school students who can’t sketch polynomials because they can’t factor, and that’s usually down to the fact that they don’t know their times tables. Teaching students different ways of visualizing and conceptualizing multiplication is great and should be the standard. But you also need to drill times tables with those “minute quizzes” you mentioned, so that in the future, multiplication can happen in the background and not get in the way of the actual problem solving. Far too many students these days can’t tell me what 9•7 is.
@@sfumato8884 I agree with you, but I just wanted to ask if you actually "know" your times tables, or if you have just memorized the answers to the times tables?
@@sfumato8884 I’m an adult and to this day I still use a finger counting trick for the 9 times tables, which in grade school was actively frowned upon. Mental math is helpful when you don’t have access to a calculator (which in the modern day is rare when a lot of people have smartphones with a calculator on them), yes, but how I learned to factor polynomials was also through a trick (the FOIL method). I did not and still do not care about understanding the integral concepts of math as long as I know enough to get me by, and I’d reckon a lot of students feel the same. They just want good marks (I can also attest to this - I finally graduated high school a few months ago and the only thing that mattered to me was getting a decent grade). The last math courses I did was on statistics and consumer mathematics and I was fine with just using a calculator for everything (saved me a bunch of energy & time). I can say the same for the course before that one, which was geometry. Mental math is helpful but not necessary when the majority of people carry around a calculator on their phone
Yeah, also the things we are taught in school do not reflect on the things mathematics are really about. (After note: Sorry. I got carried away about the why of mathematics 🤦🏼♂️🤷🏼♂️) If I somehow end up going to elementary or high school education, I would try a new method: instead of giving them formulas in a plate, I would describe a problem with real world context and then either give the steps for them to do and derive the results by themselves or I would guide them through whichever idea they got for solving the problem. I like more the second option because most of the time we'd be wrong and hopefully they'll learn this lesson: being wrong is more important than being right. And it is more important because mathematics are not about being right and doing operations quickly by head. The core of mathematics is to create problems and then create the tools to solve them, and this is only possible by messing up over and over again. And there is no solvable problem that has only one way to solve. And this is the part where maths are quite essential for everyone, you gain the ability of creating tools for solving problems that show up in your day to day lives, even personal problems. Obviously, using "maths" for personal problems would be more on the philosophy side of things, but philosophy and pure maths are almost the same thing, just changing the objects inside the line of thought.
I stopped hating math when I got a teacher that encouraged us to learn and started with the very basics. He didn't think any questions were stupid (even the ones that should've been obvious or easy for our class) and always let us sit in his classroom, even when he had other classes. If we had bad days, we were allowed in his office and he'd always listen if we wanted to talk, and he always, ALWAYS, helped us when we didn't understand. In my last year of high school, I skipped a lot of classes and stayed home a lot due to chronic pain and mental health issues, but came back the last few months. Since I had missed most of his class, he sat me down one afternoon and we made up a schedule where he'd be able to teach me enough of the class to at least give me a proper grade. He took a lot of his free time to help me and he didn't even seem to mind. That was really what did it for me - he thought math was so much fun that he didn't mind working overtime to teach us. He made math fun and his class felt a lot like the first few years of school did, when you want to learn everything, all at once. I went from an E or a D to an A in the span of a few months. I wasn't the only one, either. When he was going to quit his job to take another one in a town over, most of the students begged him to stay. He did stay, in the end. I think he's still there and he's one of the best teachers I've ever had.
Damn, I sure as hell wish I was you, I had the worst math teachers and it made me hate the idea of math, the type of teachers that made you feel guilty or embarrassed for not catching on. I wish my younger self made contact with your teacher.
Gosh, that's such a heartwarming story! Tells just how big of a difference a good teacher can make. But huge respect for you as well! Getting from E to A definitely takes hard work and dedication, especially after a break even with a great teacher. Hope you're doing well health-wise and wish you all the best!
I have a friend who is better at computing mentally than me so my friend would give me random math question whenever im near them and expect me to answer right away. And whenever I stress out and tell them a wrong answer, they would laugh and tell me "Its so simple??, my younger sibling could do that in 2 seconds!". This made me so scared of being with my friend that i started avoiding them. Whenever we were forced to get together (group project or partners), i would get SO MUCH anxiety by just being beside them. But whenever i take my time and learn, i actually understand 90% of it, thats why my math exams scores are high. Im VERY slow at computing mentally BUT I KNOW WHAT IM DOING AND WHAT IT IS, JUST GIVE ME A SECOND PLEASE AND DONT MAKE FUN OF ME FOR NOT ANSWERING IT CORRECTLY IN LESS THAN 2 SECONDS.
jerk friend. I can't think under pressure because invasive thoughts are LOUD, and that sort of competitive behavior pushed me away of math(now I study math in university and I enjoy it)
I feel this. I don't have quick math skills but I am very good at basic algebra. My math anxiety comes more from complex formulas and graphing, so you could imagine what it was like being an insomniac with an accelerated geometry class at 7:30am with chemistry the period right after. Complete brain fog every day.
You know what. He she is competitive. That person wants to prove and test how he compares to others. That perdon is a good challenge how to work hard and be on your toes. Just dont take his antics seriously. I bet he works hard too and is thereofre fast at problem solving. You need speed. So its good to mentally fast as well. If its not what you want to do. Understandablw have a nice day.
@@jonathanzuckerberg8850 that is not necessarily wrong, maybe just not very well put: 90% of the game is 50% mental, so the mental part of of the game is 45%.
I’d liked to expand on that thought-we’re(atleast in my country’s education system) taught to memorize maths BEFORE we are taught that it can be analytical. From the moment we’re introduced to math we’re told to memorize formulas or like you said times tables, but we’re not taught how they’re analytically derived or developed. Then, when we’re later introduced to the more analytical side of math we get whiplash, suddenly surprised that math can get *that* meticulous and it wards many people off. My best math teacher had us create formulas for problems from scratch-that really opened my mind to maths analytical nature. It was so mind-opening. But by no means do I think teaching memorization is bad because it is a fundamental part of math. After all if you’re breaking down 5 * 6 into six individual fives added together or using mental gymnastics to subtract numbers(i.e ‘subtracting 9 from a two digit number lowers the tens place by 1 and increases the ones place by 1’) then solving complex math would take too long.
@@brickbuildersunited When I was a kid I just outright refused to memorize the multiplication table, because I had ADHD and autism and nobody ever thought it was important to give me a good reason to memorize it. (It turns out that there is a somewhat good reason to memorize it because it makes doing mental arithmetic a lot easier, and I was really bad at doing mental arithmetic for years and would always rely on a calculator. But for some reason, they never actually tried to teach me the connection between multiplication algorithms and times tables. Then again, *even if* that had been explained to me, I'm not sure I would've been able to convince myself to actually memorize it due to ADHD.) But I was fortunate to find math itself inherently interesting so once I got to pre-algebra and the analytical stuff I excelled. I'm still pretty bad at arithmetic but after enough years of it you do eventually just memorize most of the multiplication table without even explicitly trying so I've gotten better. You can also use the principles of algebra to simplify arithmetic expressions so that also helps. I'm glad that my difficulty with arithmetic never lent itself to forming an anxiety about it though. I feel like I was going somewhere in particular with this comment but I lost my train of thought. Oh well.
for real! and sometimes they don't bother to explain why something is like that even when it's easy to do so! I didn't even know that 6x3 = 6+6+6 until I was in college??? wild
@@mac8697 sorry if i sound mean, but I don't believe you. that is pretty much the definition of multiplication, and you would have to be incredebly bad at maths not to realise it.
Math, by its nature, is extremely precise and unforgiving of mistakes. It is easy to understand why people dislike working hard on a long math problem and still getting it wrong due to making one small mistake in one of the steps to solve the problem. However, I think that a bigger issue, based on my experience, is the fact most teachers can't teach effectively. Teachers may have deep specialized knowledge in a certain field, but this does not mean that they can communicate that knowledge effectively to students. Furthermore, I think that because they have devoted themselves to a certain field, they really don't understand why students don't love the field as much as they do and find the field difficult.
"Teachers may have deep specialized knowledge in a certain field, but this does not mean that they can communicate that knowledge effectively to students." ^This. People often tend to forget that teaching is an entire skill, art, and field of its own. Just because a person is good at something, it doesn't necessarily mean they must also be good at teaching it as well.
tbh i like math, but each time i have an exam at home, there's one exercice that i f* myself up while doing the final presentation + the long writtings, it's like in french class, gotta write a two page essay for a freaking theorem. + it's hard sometimes, this year after summer's vacation i didn't understand anything, they did all the hard things first, we were all lost and annoyed with the work. + getting an exam every week. + and yeah the teacher might suck at explaining, we did homotheties and a whole lot of exercices on figures, was hell, had to look it up, it was those times i had to stare at might page and try out different things to get it right. + cross products, i looked it up, couldn't understand, teacher asked to make one, but i hadn't enough numbers.
I am a math teacher, I've worked with dozens of other math teachers, and I have never met one who doesn't get why kids don't like math or why kids struggle. That kind of mentality is what build up the hatred of math, kids go into class thinking the teacher won't get them or they won't get the math, so they give up before even starting.
I was _completely_ traumatized in school and math got ruined for me very early on. I've always had severe adhd but just recently got a diagnosis at age 23 and I was severely berated by teachers for my entire time in school. From an early age I had an extreme fear of math. Now I must pass math in Uni. I've already failed the exam a few times and the lectures were awful for me. I've finally got myself to actually studying (because if I don't pass next semester I'm gonna be expelled), so I'm currently studying completely on my own terms in my own pace and it's so different. Nobody to pressure me, nobody to berate me. This world wasn't made for neurodivergent people and we are being fucked over so often. If I had been in a more positive and tolerant environment as a child I probably would have really enjoyed math. I do enjoy it now.
I'm severe adhd too, but I got lucky. I'm also autistic and 'gifted',so teachers were more than willing to help me. I also idolised my brother and wanted to be exactly like him. He loves maths.
Well said - I got a 37 and dropped my Functions course in Grade 11, and did it over the summer instead. I understood alot of the components and had a 78 in the end.
I couldn't even memorize my times tables the entire time of K-12. I didn't bother going to college, didn't see how I would succeed. What pisses me off is that they require math even if your degree or career interest doesn't need alot of math skills. It should NOT be that way. I was interested in history or archeology and stuff like that. But you have to take math also, and that was out of the question for me.
my brother in christ, you don't hate math because of adhd. you hate it because for some reason education thought it to be a good idea to attach ego to learning
@@michaelryan5973 i think they mean that their adhd affected their ability to actually do the math (how it did that depends on what they meant and they didn't specify), and the teachers berating them because of their adhd affecting their ability to do math was what actually created the trauma. So, their fear was not a direct consequence of adhd, but it is a result of educators not being forgiving and/or accommodating for slower learners or learners that need to be taught the subject a different way for them to understand
For me it was a series of unpleasant, aggressive teachers. I'd ask "what is this used for?" and they'd answer something dismissive like "it'll become clear later" which ... look, it's algebra. It's used to build spaceships and make video games and program computers and aim lasers and make music come out of speakers. One sentence "this is what makes the lighting work in Quake" would have engaged me enough to love it.
Yeaaah same. We all understand the point of the 4 main operations. Nobody explains the point of algebra. I get the video is about mental mathematics but I doubt most students dislike math bc of that. I started disliking math in the 8th grade when we started learning about imaginary numbers for example, and multiple unknown factors in an operation. For me it wasn't even anxiety after a point, it was more like, what's the point? That's the issue I had with science subjects like chemistry. Studying chemistry could've been so cool if it wasn't just theoretical. It's a shame. Edit: I wasn't taught math in English I was corrected in the comments that it's called imaginary numbers.
@@Houtblokje imaginary numbers ie square root of -1 while at first seem like hokus pokus but it is used all the time. physicists for example use imaginary numbers to explain behaviours of fundamental particles. what i have learned to appreciate is that while there are "imaginary" numbers, they are in fact very real in that they have real world applications. Also the general attitude people have to "imaginary" numbers as if its some weird abstraction that breaks peoples brains, i find to be rather curious. we everyday people utilise the very same abstraction with numbers, for example; 0 is an assigned symbol for something that is absent of value, so there is a number that is absent of value? that seems very abstract. also there are negative numbers????? so there are numbers that have less value than 0 (which has no value?) now that is very abstract when you think about it. however i never hear anyone complain about the lack of "realness" of those numbers. there is a great video by veritasium titled "how imaginary numbers were invented". once you learn to disconnect/ let go of the need to have numbers be strictly bounded in reality, the greater the insights you can uncover about nature.
My grandfather worked as a high school principal until he retired and he had one thing to say regarding why some people struggle with math so much - "all math teachers suck". He says that since math comes easily to them they will often do things such as combining multiple steps in one that can make it difficult for the students seeing the problem for the first time to follow along. The teacher finds math easy, they can follow along with the thread of logic it took to reach that answer so why can't the students? Generally speaking it's not malice, it's lack of understanding of the students' perspective. The students who find math comes easily to them will be able to keep up with the teacher's explanations and the ones who can't start to fall further and further behind. I tutored people in math for many years and I sometimes found myself wanting to make the same mistakes the teachers do but self-awareness kept me from doing it. Say you have the problem 2 + 2 + 6 - 3. It may seem so obvious to you that 2 + 2 = 4 and 6 - 3 = 3 so you write down on the next line 4 + 3 but some people's minds just don't work that way. Trying to do multiple steps in a single leap is just too much when they're still learning this stuff. Maybe one day they'll be able to follow along but when it's their first time being introduced to these concepts it overloads their brain. Math is one of those subjects that once you fall behind it can be difficult to catch up. Math builds on itself in a way that other subjects such as English just don't to the same degree. If you have trouble with addition/subtraction then understanding what multiplication/division is will be difficult. If you can't understand the relationship between addition/subtraction or multiplication/division then doing algebra is going to be hard. If you read Romeo and Juliet in English class and do poorly it doesn't mean that you can't do better when the class starts reading Lord of the Flies. At some point in their math classes kids just can't progress any further if they are missing too many of those foundational concepts. In most of my tutoring the problem wasn't the new material being taught, it was the missing foundational knowledge that would allow the student to understand the new material. Edit: spelling/grammar mistakes because if you couldn't tell for me English class = hard
this is the best explanation of this i've ever seen! For so many years I didn't understand basic math concepts until I finally got a good teacher in 9th grade who could explain math in a way that I understood. I understand that teachers are ridiculously underpaid for having such a difficult job but I also think that math teachers should try to communicate with their kids more, ESPECIALLY with elementary kids!
@@fredweasley7112 I know! I never struggled with math so I never really understood what he was saying when I was younger. It wasn't until I started tutoring that the pieces all fell into place and I understood what he was getting at. Seeing the results of these teachers' work firsthand with students who didn't find math easy was very eye opening for me.
Math was extremely easy for me in elementary school, so I think my brain started to make this association:math=boring, but also easy so you don't need to do anything. Than, somewhere in the 8th grade, where things actually started to become a little bit complicated for me, I still had the mindet that I didn't have to work much for the subject. So I'd get frustrated when I didn't understand immediately and I wouldn't bother with homeworks. By the time I finally realized that, I was behind in math, not necessarely because they were basic things I didn't understand at all, it's more that they were basic things that weren't automatic for me and that I forgot how to do it right after re-learning it. So, the times where I didn't get frustrated and just did the(actually small)ammount of work to catch up, I'd get results in the 90% for the next one or two exams; if I didn't, I would often be outright failling. This went on for the 9th and 10th grade, and by the time I reached the 11th grade, I was so frustrated that I decided to not take either chemistry or physics, despite the fact that I had done both the advanced science and advance math course-and I passed with results in the low 70%. Now I'm in college, and for the programme I choose, there was actually one course that does feature math, a statistic course. I've done a lot to improve my organisation and discipline this session and my general average is around 85%; and guess what, in my stats course, I got 92%, nearly 20% above the average of the class...Kind of sad.
I agree with most of what you’ve said here, though it’s important to note that only *some* maths teachers are like this. Personally, I’ve only very recently started to like maths, due to a combination of a couple good, understanding maths teachers and a patient maths tutor a while back. However, the reason i used to hate maths was definitely the fault of the teachers who just didn’t bother to explain why we did things. I never understood fractions as a kid, until one day, a teacher mentioned how the line meant ‘divided by’, and it all made sense. Until then, other teachers just assumed we knew that a fraction was just a simpler way of writing a decimal. It sucks so much, because so many people hate maths just because they had terrible maths teachers when they were young.
It's been my experience that a whole lot of adults seem to have utterly forgotten whet it was like to be a child. Parents, teachers, etc. This has *always* baffled me. I'm fifty-seven years old and I *still* remember. Teach children the way you wanted to be taught when you were a kid.
One thing I try to remember (and remind others of) is that kids literally just got here - they have no idea what's going on. Anyone under the age of 18, while they are capable of having complex thoughts + understanding things etc, literally just got here. They don't have the years of life experience that anyone over 18 does, so things that are obvious to older people are completely new + unknown things for younger people. Like, a baby doesn't know how to move it's head with its neck muscles, a toddler can't ride a bike properly yet, a kid doesn't know how to operate a stove or a kettle, and a teen doesn't know how taxes etc work. I constantly remind myself that kids are basically just tiny stupid adults - not stupid in the negative, insulting way but stupid in the homer Simpson way. They're doing their best but they don't have all of the information adults do, so they make mistakes etc that don't make sense to adults (bc we know the extra info) because of their limited information
@@doctorwholover1012 I fully agree with you, I would just like to add a footnote: even people above the age of 18 often have a lack of life experience and worldly understanding. I would know. I turn 21 in less than a month and not only do I hardly feel different than when I was 16, but I am quickly learning that I know NOTHING about the world except for my experience in school, my friends, and my hobbies. So basically, only the stuff I've actually put time into. And I haven't had a whole lot of time on this earth thus far, so my knowledge and understanding of the world at large is still limited. I realize that I'm lucky to even have this level of self-awareness at my age. Many don't. It's not their fault, it's just how life and growing up is. Which brings me to another point: I believe that, at least in largely English-speaking Western societies (HUGE generalization), our culture puts too much emphasis on being a fully functional adult by a certain age. Your teen years are just the beginning of your journey in life, you're just barely starting to learn how to learn. But as soon as you reach around 23 or so, you're expected to just be out on your own with not a problem in sight, which is NOT how people work. And I think this mentality bleeds into teaching. You're expected to have just learned everything you were taught in school by the time you graduate. Again, that's just not how people work. Some do, sure. But not all. Not even most. I don't think I will ever understand why we have such a strong push to be self-sufficient as young as possible. If anything, that just stunts people's learning rather than helping, at least in the case of academics. I can buy alcohol in less than a month... but I still struggle to solve math problems with more than one 2-digit number. Everyone learns in different ways and at different rates, and expecting everyone to learn the same way at the same time will (and has!) only result in disaster for entire generations of people.
I literally was always really good at memorizing words…but numbers didn’t seem to have meaning so I was always bad at remembering anything related to numbers
Might not actually be what’s going on here for you, but there is this thing called Dyscalculia, I have it, it’s like the dyslexia of maths, it can effect people who have it differently, like I am extremely good at math, but only if I have a calculator, without it, i can’t even do primary school basic maths… it can effect things like reading sheet music, reading the time in digital and so on
Yeah. Like a lot of the time in some things to could just go through the... *_9 Steps to a B in English_* - Read title - Read questions - Construct idea of what the text probably is - Try to read the text - Get bored - Zone out for 2 minutes - Read a question - Skim the text for a good enough answer - Repeat 7 & 8
I mean my thing is “don’t be afraid to be wrong” isn’t exactly an option when your grade depends on you being right. I would like chemistry if it had way less math. I will try to work on my anxiety tho maybe it’ll help my grades
@@rosegeyer7403I understand. I am a computer science major and I only liked physical chemistry because of maths. Glad don't have to study it anymore lol
Not sure if this will help, but for chemistry follow your units. Ignore the numbers and try to find a path to get your starting unit(s) into your final unit (of the answer). It won't always work but it might help you visualize how to reach a solution. Another thing is that if you don't know what to do, the first step is to find moles of whatever element/molecule they give you. Sometimes knowing the first step helps you see what step 2 could be. One last thing, when doing conversions, don't do the long line of numbers where you cross out the units. Better to start a new line after every conversion that way if you make a mistake you might not have to start at the beginning. It's a little slower but less chance to make a mistake.
THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I’VE BEEN TRYING TO TELL PEOPLE!!! In the 4th grade my brain would just go blank whenever I did math, then I’d get so stressed I’d start crying- I’d even try to explain to people: “I’m sorry I don’t understand what you’re saying my mind just shut off” but no one understood what I meant. Thank you so much for this video and I may or may not be crying right now.
I actually loved math until the teachers would tell you that you need to follow and write down this specific long complicated route to get to the answer when you already have a simple one in mind.
This is accurate to me. I would have one way that I used to find the correct answer, and then the teacher marks me wrong because it's not the formula taught in class. And then ironically, the school invites a math expert who basically gave a talk that can be summed up as "There is more than one way to solve a math problem". Strange that the same school that ridiculed me for a different formula brought an expert in that vindicated my process 😂😂😂
I remember I got help from someone else, who explained it easily The teacher then did it a completely more complicated annoying way I don't like that teacher
I was like you, but as calculations became longer I was glad I had the habit to write down every step, makes it easier to think and find mistakes but you shouldn't have to write every little algebraic step in solving an equation that's just dumb
At higher levels the total number of steps required to solve a problem increases to the point you definitely need to be writing down the process. The actual reason you need to write down all the steps in school is to let the grader into your head and verify that you are taking one of the valid paths to the answer and not applying a trick to a problem where it doesn't work.
what I hate about math tests is that by the time I find out about tiny errors in my solutions, it's already too late. instead of locating them myself and correcting them before turning my work in, I just turn them in immediately because I don't have enough time to check. and even if I _did_ have enough time, I still could repeat my thought proccess step by step and walk into the exact same pitfalls I did before.
How do you do preparation for the test? Some days before the test or study regularly? I usually see kids who study only before a test ran into this problem. If you study regularly then you need good concentration.
@@alokbaluni8760 the only real preparation is studying the formulas, if there are any. we have math every day in school so it’s not like I’m not getting enough practice
Yes, this is so frustrating. The courses I'm taking now have timed tests, often it's just barely enough time to input the information so you have to do it right immediately. It adds an extra layer of pressure.
What kind of tests do you take? Is it the kind where the teacher themselves personally checked or even made themselves? As I used to have tests that the teachers themselves haven't even bothered to check if they've taught their students that which frustrated me to no end. Now, I have better teachers and actually calculated the time we would finished and check answers we have. The ones who are late to finish are usually the ones who studied but haven't really had enough practice to the questions the teachers taught us and our teacher actually give us practice question that we could practice on our own.
I always asked that, and strangely enough 90% of my math teachers were somewhat mean, intentionally or not. And I have a degree in computer science, I love math, but (in my experience) it was though by people that seemed angry to be teaching.
I studied math (currently doing my ph.d.) and I finally found out the answer to why so many math teachers are mean. It's because they suck at it themselves! The very same questions school kids tend to ask, like: What is that even good for? Will I ever need that in later life? Why do I have to remember the method when I could just guess instead? - they all come up in math class in University, from the soon to be teachers. I've teached several courses by now and the worst students are always those that want to become teachers. Many of them took math as a second subject, apparently because exams are easy to check and thus it's less time consuming than other subjects. And so there is no real motivation to really wrap one's head around it. They just want to get done with it and be done with it.
I feel like I knew three math teachers that weren't intimidating, and only one of those people were actually good at teaching. I used to tutor, and I really felt that I was helping people with their math anxiety. It's an exercise of empathy for sure!
So I thought I could weigh in on this a bit. I'm a pure mathematician, and one common trait among mathematicians is that they're very good at looking forward to delayed gratification and very curious. Maths is hard, even for professionals, not least because you can not take inspiration from nature*, and more importantl, because your foundation can never be weak. Many kids do a brain dump after exams, and without proper foundations, doing mathematics is like trying to play a piano concerto without having ever practiced a scale. Many kids are also never allowed to be wrong (incidentally, because we don't encourage little girls to take risks, many more young girls are turned away by maths from a much younger age than young boys). Adults tell them that being wrong means they're deffective somehow. Our school systems don't help either. But professional mathematicians are wrong all the time, not once they have published their papers, but errors in drafts are very common. You learn through your mistakes, and collaborators are very good for this, because they can spot your mistakes much easier than you can.
One way I've thought about it is that instead of having a "learning curve," math is more like a giant bouldering wall. Some people are "natural born climbers" and quickly learn to enjoy the whole process of climbing, including when they fall or get stuck. Others who had consistently poor experiences with it at an early age may develop mental blocks or convince themselves they're "just not good at it," and that leaves them terrified of going more than a foot or two off the ground. We need to totally rethink math teaching so that nobody feels like they can't conquer the wall!
@@nzuckman It is a learning curve, though. But the way in which one learns maths is very different from how one would learn say, biology or chemistry and has to do with the tower-like nature of maths. Knowing facts in maths is only about a third of the story. You also need to be able to derive the facts yourself, as well as connect the dots to form a larger unifying pictures. You can't cram for maths either. You might pass tests that way, but you won't ever understand it that way. Maths requires constant practice and mental investments. In order to understand something, you need to think and then rethink about it, sometikes even for months on end. There are geniuses, and talent helps, but only up to a very small extent. The wall as you described it is not real. What are real are the willingness to commit and preservere. One learns maths with the same mentality that one would have for learning a musical instrument or a language.
@@anonymoose3423 Oh, so it's like learning how to read sheet music then. I'm told that I have "some" talent in the arts (lol no) but I always tell people that whatever skills I have in music, writing or drawing, I got from taking the time to learn and practice those skills.
I remember being told I was wrong before I'd even proposed an answer as a kid - I said show me where, and turned out I was right. Was trying the algebra in the book left on the back of the toilet when I was in 1st or 2nd grade, which I'd actually already learned through TLC computer games. (My autistic ass had played through each "grade" level in the set many times.) The cycle continued till I ended up correcting mistakes in the Trig final key in junior year. Laid the foundation for my loud mouth today🤣 I always wanted to get into computer science, but can't afford college, and not willing to go into debt or sign sketchy business contracts. (Still self-teaching as best as I can.)
@@eo7097 exactly like knowing how to read music. You don't know maths like how you would know which gene controls the segmentation of an embryo, but you know the skills involved in doing maths.
the worst part about math anxiety for me is that I don't actually have it. I have dyscalculia, but my teachers were convinced that the only reason I couldn't do the sheets of 100 problems under time pressure was anxiety, and that assertion has followed me around and become a source of anger and mockery ever since. it has been completely impossible to explain to people that it's not scary, I'm not afraid of the math, I even recognize and appreciate its important, I simply cannot process it beyond the most basic of basics without giving it my full focus and a very long time... but even then, some advanced math will never be within my mental grasp, it all becomes static. man am I glad we're all walking around with calculators in our pockets every day after all
It's a real thing and I have also heard it called numeric dyslexia or alphanumeric dyslexia in my case. Currently 65 years old and it doesn't go away or get better. No amount of tutoring or practice helps.
I oftentimes find people saying that they enjoy math only when they understand what they're doing, as soon as they're lost they hate it, same with me. I'll have to force myself to practice hard until I understand something, and when I do understand I really enjoy it. It also depends on the teacher, my college calculus professor made things seem much more complicated than they needed to be, I practically learned everything on my own time by using youtube as a main resource.
There are lots of things that are hard to grasp in Maths but if you have a bit of interest in physics, chemistry or computer science then it feels good that the thing that you study in Maths are applied in these field. Topics like complex numbers become interesting if you know their application in other fields.
"Writing" as in storytelling? I call nonsense. There are quite some mathematicians out there who went on to become popular authors, especially in the comedic sector.
YESS TO THIS!!! I do maths and English literature a levels (exams at the age of 18) because both are so so interconnected and whoever I talk to hat does on or the other doesn't get it. I wish school wasn't structured that way.
@@lonestarr1490 that's why it's something they shouldn't be telling kids. I struggled with math for a long time, but now I use it everyday at work, so it's become easier.
A lot of the time I find that people prefer one over the other. I certainly do, writing is impossible for me, but my math-hating friends can churn out an essay in under 2 hours.
I was told you were either good in math and sciences or languages. No. Unless you have severe learning difficulties, you can learn both. I am good at essay writing and storytelling even though I was a diagnosed disgraphic. I am writing a novel.
Omg math anxiety makes so much sense. I got made fun of in 6th grade for how bad I was at math when I got put in an advanced math class because I did good on a standardized test and had "good potential"
Same I ended up taking “precalculus” twice because they put me in too early (from good test scores) and I failed it. Ended up taking precal a total of 3 times in my academic career and don’t even use it xD
and funnily enough for me that's the thing i love about math. I like having the certainty that there is a right answer and that i can prove it myself, whereas english/history has so much that's left to interpretation and nothing has a clear straightforward answer. I just had to turn in a paper and hope it was up to standards
@misslovedog8177 yeah I was exactly going to say this just like they said, I can say that there are so many other possible correct answers in other subjects, of which there HAS to be something better than mine
That's the perfect way to word why I disliked math but always loved English. That and the numbers always change half way through my problem solving, even on paper. Which by the way, did you all know, you can do the process wrong and still manage to get the right answers. My teachers were always baffled by this.
it always felt like I was barely able to keep up and everyone else was racing ahead with not a thought or care about who was left behind, and wouldn't be able to explain the lessons to me either
I was diagnosed with dyscalculia at an age of 25, which was extremely freeing because I now know why my brain skips big numbers on a page or why I was always stuck doing my maths homework late into the night as a kid. Bad teachers did not help either of course. I thought I would never get a degree in science because of my math aversion, but with some hard work I am now doing a masters degree in biology
heck that's great, I have dyscalculia too but I went the opposite direction where I refused to get anywhere close to math of any kind growing up and avoided it any chance I could. I'm about to get my associate's in visual arts because I spent a lot of time I should have been doing math doodling instead and I've gotten pretty good even though I don't know what I'm doing next. I feel like since I kinda put all my focus on this one thing and every other job in our society requires at least some base knowledge of how math works I don't really have anything to fall back on if I mess up or if being an artist doesn't work out.
@@wiiink That is actually what I did before deciding to take a bachelors in biology. After finishing my Illustration degree I realized I didn't want it as a job and so I went back to school to get the grades in maths I was missing to get into university. It was difficult, and I didn't even know I had dyscalculia at the time. I do hope you will be able to make it in art though!
In my country they don't even know if theres such a thing called dyscalculia. They just assume you're dumb and you're done for. And there are no solid alternative ways for a student to pursue a career which he or she passionate about. It is so sad.
Dang, you're kind of awesome! It's great to know that people can still thrive in science even when diagnosed with dyscalculia. I wish you the best of luck!
My problem with math is that it was extremely repetitive, and never felt "real" to me. We were always learning seemingly abstract things, and then we would have to do it 50 times with only different numbers. Couldn't stand it.
Ah i love math BECAUSE of how abstract it is lol. In fact, I actually was never super interested in math even though I was good at it, until I hit calculus. Before, everything was so mindless, like your job was literally just to be a calculator. In calculus there was an element of creativity and “what if” where you could experiment with your math, even though it was mostly stuff that’s hard to visualize with no real world equivalent. It was like discovering a whole new, abstract, world. Part of it was just that I had an insanely amazing teacher and it was my first AP math, and AP classes in general tend to teach critical thought while normal classes just force you to memorize. My first AP calc class is the only reason I’m a STEM major today.
@@lizzzylavender relatable, growing up I enjoyed the questions and exercises that felt like puzzles I had to figure out but loathed the algorithmic and trivial calculations. Learning maths as a set of rules and shortcuts is much better than looking at it as a bunch of drills to repeat endlessly, I could feel my dedication decline by the minute I had to crunch several lines of operations
My main problem was that I was always a really inquisitive little shit so the first thing on my mind when I heard of a new math concept would be "but why?". Little did I know that to get to that point you'd have to get extremely advanced in math and learn about proofs in college which... I still do not know how to do. Really wish it was just made to be interwoven with some other science and philosophy or something to make it feel tangible as something that we use to structure how we see the movements in nature. I was just always told to stop thinking about it... so I did. And then stopped caring about math altogether
@@Nell-r0se Yeah, I’m really glad that my gifted teacher in elementary school was so good. My parents tell me about how she seemed so excited to figure out how my brain worked and how best to teach me, and a lot of it was that. She had to explain to me WHY for just about everything. If she just gave me a formula I would mentally clock out, especially since I don’t have a very good memory, but if she took the time to explain to me what is arithmetically happening and why we’d use it in that scenarios, I’d get it just like that.
I definitely relate to this. I did fine in math classes (yay calculators) but have always struggled with mental math. For several years, pre-pandemic, I volunteered at my local library book sale once a month, as a cashier, and we didn't have a real cash register, like that would do the math of giving people change for me, so I had to figure it out myself. If people gave me exact change, no problem, but if they needed change back, I literally had to use a calculator a good portion of the time, because I was so untrusting of my ability to do subtraction in my head. And sometimes people would give me additional money "to help" with the change back. Like I think if it the cost was $2.35, some people would give me $5.35 so that I just had to give them $3 back, but I'd already been planning to give them $5 minus $2.35 and then I would panic and forget how math works and try to figure out $5 - $2.35 + .35, and would think "This isn't helping, you're just making me do math twice!!" Anyway. I should probably do some practice math questions lol.
Man, me too. I just can't hold onto numbers in my head. Any numbers, not even math related. Memorizing important phone numbers or ID numbers is a MASSIVE pain unless there's a pattern in it. I can look at a number, repeat it several times in my head, look away, and forget it within seconds. So trying to imagine those numbers in my head long enough to calculate an answer is near impossible without extreme concentration and way more time than it would've taken to write it out or use a calculator. I have to write down EVERYTHING. Every single tiny step, or else I lose track of everything. Even with simple addition or subtraction I also get numbers mixed up in my head a lot and write them down in the wrong order (like 12 instead of 21). I ALSO get my lefts and rights confused all the time and wonder if that's connected
@@slitheen3 That's a HUGE sign of dyslexia. Just saying, friend. If the problem is severe, then you should get checked. Really. Edit: It can also just be general confusion and panic. But, those are signs of dyslexia.
@@124myth I guess it's possible, but I'm very good at reading and writing, and have been my whole life. I'd choose to read books instead of play with other kids on the playground and wrote stories for fun ever since I could hold a pencil or type on a computer. Isn't problems with reading the main characteristic of dyslexia? I looked it up, and I do struggle with other things listed as symptoms like telling left VS right, spatial awareness problems, poor fine motor skills and poor handwriting... but words come extremely natural to me and I've never struggled to read things. It's JUST numbers, not letters. But you're probably right, I should get it checked out either way
The headmaster at our school had a habit of hiring young teachers fresh out of the leading universities like Oxford and Cambridge even though they didn’t have any formal teaching training because it was cheap. Of course, they were incredibly brainy and talented mathematicians but THEY COULD NOT TEACH FOR SHIT. They just whizzed through examples, concepts without ever breaking them down or explaining the fundamentals behind them. This was not a problem for the kids who were naturally good at maths, but the kids who didn’t immediately “get it” and/or had gaps in their basic maths knowledge/understanding were completely left behind.
The way my math teacher has been working for at least 35 years but still teaches like this 💀 sometimes it's really not about the experience, some people just shouldn't be teachers or shouldn't teach some subjects in schools where they're not a priority
Hah, I know of a school very much like that - except that I know for sure that at least two of their current Oxbridge maths & physics teachers - one of whom was a young teacher fresh out of uni - know deep within them that imparting insight and understanding, and helping when difficulties arise, is among the most important things when teaching, which is why they went into those jobs in the first place. Which is a nice change from the alternative :) (neither of those two is me, btw) But I'm sure there are, unfortunately, plenty of the other kind in various places, too
The other problem is if you have a degree in maths and you want to do a maths related job, pretty much the only options are accountant, mathematician, and math teacher/tutor. so people who want to do maths are kinda forced to teach and mostly arent the best at it.
@@kettle7425 why would you list "accountant"? Because it has numbers? Studying math at the university level you'll deal with very few numbers besides 1 and 0. True that there are not many options for applying the knowledge directly, but there are many options where a mathematician's mindset is very useful.
"Don't be afraid of being wrong!" "Also, if you're wrong you'll fail this class and never make your major and be a disappointment for the rest of your life!"
School will say that failure is good because you learn from your mistakes but then they’re gonna be attacking your entire future when you get the wrong answer for a question.
I first started being bad at math in 4th grade under similar circumstances. We’d be told to do a lot of problems from our math book and we had 50 minutes or else it’d be homework. I NEVER finished within that 50 minutes and I was the only one (that I saw). It was embarrassing especially since I was seen as the “smart” kid until then. It eventually just turned into me writing down all the problems so I wouldn’t be seen taking that giant math book home with me. Ever since then it’s been an embarrassing subject for me.
My math teacher would always pay attention to just two guys who were really good at math and she would call the rest of us slow learners and sometimes, she wouldn’t pay attention to us the whole lesson, because we were too slow to understand the subject in her eyes. I found a tutor later on who REALLY loved math. He would talk about math and physics with so much enthusiasm yet I still understood what he was talking about. Four years later, he is working on his PhD from physics and I have the honor to listen to him everyday and I hope I will have this honor for the rest of my life
@@IndigoTeddy When you listen to someone every day (and that is EVERY DAY) that means you live with them. Doing that for the rest of your life means you're married to them. Not to mention, keeping in touch with a tutor for four years absolutely means they became more than tutor and tutee, because once your classes are done, do you still ask the tutor for help???
HS math teacher here, and firstly, *THANK YOU* for focusing on and diving into math anxiety, its causes, and how to deal with it. Every semester I get new students who say "I suck at math," because they come from an experience just like the one you described: classes focusing on speed and accuracy, instead of focusing on the underlying concepts. I regularly f*ck up equations on the board, and say "Welp, it happens" and correct my work - because it's the best way to show that mistakes are common and okay. Also, thanks for introducing me to onlinekyne - 100% not my style of creator, but definitely someone my students will dig on, and I'll show her stuff in class. Hopefully the game will be popular too, but that might take some bribery...
"I'd rather make fun of myself than make a fool out of myself" That actually sums up a lot of 'anxieties' regarding learning pretty much anything. E.g. there are certain video games (weird example ik) that I actively choose to not practice at, because I know I'm bad right now, and would rather stay that way jokingly, than try to slowly improve, for fear of judgement upon failing even when actually putting the effort in. All of that said, it doesn't solve the problem. Guess I gotta stop caring what people think...
This is really a good point. Being afraid of making mistakes is very destructive and makes the learning process a lot longer, not only in math but in everything
yeah also for me in tests or by myself im really good at math (def best in our 100 people grade) but when my friend asks me a fast question to answer fast I just give up
One thing worth adding is that this trauma probably stems from the proliferation of timed tests in primary school, where you only have like 3 minutes to answer like 50 basic single-digit math questions, which are shown to increase stress when taken.
Are you sure the source of stress is the tests themselves and not the punishments? My primary school did "Math Minute" every week (1 minute, 50 questions), but no one was traumatized by it, probably because the teachers treated it like a fun little non-physical exercise whose sole purpose was to get our adrenaline pumping, early into the day. No punishments, no comparing students with each other, no humiliation for failing.
@@akdn7660 I feel like it’s not the punishments but the atmosphere and reason. Even if you’re not punished if you fail, if you feel like you need to do it well, perfect, etc. it could still be a stress inducing. When I said reason I meant whether the test is graded, a game, or just drills. If it is graded, it’s usually more stressful, drills are still stressful but not as much as graded test. Games however are more carefree. However, sometimes, regardless of reason, people are stress when they get answers wrong or such because they are worried about the reactions of teachers or parents (especially teachers because most of the time, teachers are the ones who checks your papers).
Math is the most tangible measurement of failure. And I dont want people to keep telling me I failed or how much I've failed when I'm in the process of learning. Unlike arts and other creative subjects. I personally like art, painting, design because people cannot tell me I failed because they metrics are subjective to personal perception. It all depends on IF I MYSELF like what I made or not. And thats the best way to overcome competition, you can improve yourself. I life that.
Interestingly enough, I prefer to know that I failed and where my mistake is. It helps me improve faster and that improvement is more tangible to me than getting a B on a paper or art piece one day and a C the next due to subjective opinions. Then again, I'm a Computer Science major so that's how my brain works, I suppose.
I'm in animation and art also has it's own that are not subjective to personal perception so I don't see much difference to be honest. Learning anatomy, breaking down measurements of design, straights against curves, colour theory, timing etc. But unlike math they can't always tell you exactly what's wrong and why you failed. I'm not sure if this is good or bad just it is what it is.
In my experience school subjects that are supposed to have subjective metrics actually don't. For instance there is only one right way to interpret whatever literature piece is given to you. They always tell you you get points if you can argue and support what you see in the text, but you don't. The teacher wants you to see one specific thing and if you write about something else you get a bad grade. This is why I never liked doing character analyses or the like when I was in school
i like hearing where i fail weather it is subjective or objective. I at least am just not a fan of... science. I do not get the talent for art and i am more oriented in philosophy, history and literature. It is just a lot more interesting to me and balance between knowing facts and creating and thinking on your own as I think exactly these are the subjects that usually motivate more critical thinking and doubts...
Tbh I've always felt that a contributor to people giving up on math is not only the emphasis on "do arithmetic quickly" torture that elementary schools put you through, but the fact that so many popular characters in the popular media people consume as children all hate math. Hollywood paints math as this thing that you're supposed to hate, and I think that damages the relationship of young people with the subject. People who may otherwise fall in love with the beauty of higher level math leave it behind because they were told they should hate it. And we'll, they weren't always getting instant 100s on those timed arithmetic quizzes, so they must not be good enough to try anyway
I fucking love the names she gives the chapters, like “my villain origin story” when she talks about doing as many questions as possible to win stickers as a child.
When I was in grade school we’d literally have to do these competitions where the teacher would point out random students and make them compete for who could answer multiplication questions the fastest in front of the whole class. It was harrowing and I remember the people who were good at multiplication would use this as a way to brag and make others feel bad. Anyways the seconds before the teacher would point someone out were terrifying. It made me feel like such a failure.
I literally don't even understand how the teachers come up with these cruel humiliating methods and what they think they'll accomplish by using them. It sound like something that would make me skip class on the regular, instead of motivate me to study.
This comment unearthed some traumatic memories for me. I would genuinely cry myself to sleep the night before school knowing that these ‘games’ were coming up the next day. My brain would sort of freeze up and I would just be stuck there with all those eyes on me, waiting for a response. It was so traumatic for me and to this day I still freeze up when asked to do any sort of mental maths on the spot. It’s something I’m incredibly embarrassed about and I dread being caught off guard with it in everyday life. I’ve always just told myself I’m not mathematically inclined but the way I was taught maths at school DEFINITELY wasn’t helping, lol.
As a Canadian math teacher this episode hurts my heart. I'm so sorry your grade 1 teacher did that to you, that is terrible math teaching. I work so hard every school year to try to undo harmful math practices students have experienced in elementary and middle school. I think this is a great topic for your video. So many people don't think about how math could be different especially after they leave school. To extend your thinking further, I would suggest that "faster" math should not be the goal, flexible math is much better. Thinking of numbers flexibly means using the numbers given to you interesting ways to make it easier for you. In your example of 12x17 there are many strategies that could work for students, all equally valid. You could add 12's together, think 10x17 and then 2x17, half and double to make the question 6x34, and a bunch of other strategies. My grade 8 students could come up with a ton of ways to solve that one problem and they are all equally valid and shows us something about the truths of math. So it's more about exploring and discovering math as opposed to getting the answer faster. I have a ton of other thoughts on educational reform in math and a bunch of great sources and resources if you ever wanted to explore this topic more. Keep up the great work on the channel.
Memorizing stuff is hard for me and it was very hard for me to remember multiplication tables, so I don't actually use them. I look for patterns in the question and use them to get an answer. I calculate 12x17 by breaking it up into 12x12 and 5x12. I happen to know that 12x12 = 144 and 5 feet is 60 inches. Add them together: ignore the least significant 4; 6+4 =10, carry to over the 1, 1+1=2, reassemble the number to 2-0-4. Double check to make sure I didn't get the carry wrong. Math became so much easier when I got into algebra and didn't have to remember arithmetic.
Thank you for the hard work! My family piled their expectations on me by giving me a Mental Maths Book and then punishing me when I couldn't instinctively do it like in English (I used to watch English cartoons growing up, it is my second language) so it really put me off
Any recommendations for math books/resources to get more into it? I want to understand math better cuz I like science but I've been shattered in regards to feeling like I'm capable of doing the math
This makes me think of a few weeks ago when I was very tired and trying to figure out how long a shift was (let's say it was 7 to 4.) So I thought: were on a 12 hour clock, so I need to get all the hours to one side of the clock. The three hours on the second "clock" need to move to the first one. 7-4 is 3, so it's the same as three to noon, and 12-3=9, so it's a nine hour shift. My mom and sister thought that was a very odd way to get to the answer. 🤣
@@vaishnavisingh9244 Yeah my family were also very aggressive about math growing up. Luckily later in life I learned that math isn't just memorizing or finding an answer, but I still have arithmetic anxiety.
I tutored my best friend in math through college (that was how we met and became best friends). Here are a few touches added into the subjects to make it simple for him: - Think of math as a language: at the core, all math expressions are technically short-hand writings. Just like learning a language, the new symbols, new operations are like a new word. As long as one understands the meaning of it, and reads/understands math expressions properly. It already helps tremendously in removing math anxiety. - learning math is like building a pyramid, new knowledge is built upon the previous ones. Therefore, when someone says "they are bad at calculus", it is not necessary true. The teacher/tutor needs to find where the hole of the student's knowledge and 'plug' the gap. For example, when I tutored my friend on calculus, he keeps get the wrong answer. It turned out that he kept screwing the basic order of operations. I spent weeks to help him on it, and he got better at Calculus. - Lastly, this piece is applicable to algebra. This is where most of my America teachers screwed up. "Never plug in or do any calculations until the expression is solved algebraically." This is the correct way to do math and it helps the students to understand things abstractly, and easy to find errors if any.
This is only true if your brain doesn't flip things into different orders while writing down the numbers and letters or while trying to do mental calculations. Tutors saw me write problems down incorrectly and would point it out, and it would happen repeatedly. And if I did happen to write a problem correctly, it was not possible to to follow them on how to get the answer. It was a waste of their time and mine.
@@dbs555 I gotcha. I would point back to the 2nd point I made: you just had bad tutors/mentors. 😆 They failed to find out where your knowledge gap was and helped to plug it. It is really hard to find good tutors who are good at their jobs and also genuinely care about your knowledge foundation. I don't blame them, because most of the time, the students come in to only want to pass the test and move on with their lives, not caring to actually understand the math.
So basically, you were never taught anything beyond algorithmic solutions for basic arithmetic, moved on to more abstract mathematics, and never had to look back because it's ... arithmetic. I don't think that's why most people hate math. I think most people hate "math" because "math" builds on itself. If you are falling behind in Biology, just wait it out and you'll move on to a brand new subject. Might take a unit, might take a year. But you won't necessarily need to have operational knowledge of this year to be able to get through next year. Math? Nope. If you don't have operational knowledge of algebra, you will struggle with trig. If you struggle with trig, you will have some gaps in calculus. Those gaps in calculus will have to be filled before you move to calc 2 or you will have a Bad Time. And if you aren't fluent in calculus and algebra, you might as well not bother taking any higher math classes beyond them. For this reason, I think Math is better internalized as a "language" course. A humanities thing instead of a STEM thing. Even though it's right there on the tin for STEM.
Yes, I think the main reason is because if you miss something or do not understand every building part of a concept you'll get stuck. If you can solve 20 exercises on your first try, you're most likely gonna love Math. just by the pure dose of ego boost that you get from that, but if you get stuck on the 3rd one, damn it will get frustrating.
To add to what you said, It's not uncommon for lot people to make it college level calculus and barely understand algebra. The calculus principles often aren't that hard to grasp, but when you throw in intense algebra in most of the calculus problems it doesn't matter if you understand the theory. If you fail the computation you're boned. For many, this is the first time the "system" didn't just keep pushing them through and suddenly they're failing an expensive college class.
I'm not sure that I agree about bio, if you don't understand mitosis you'll never get what okizaki fragments are. We don't go nearly as deep on any science subject as we do with math, so I think that we just don't run into those problems as often in other subjects. I certainly had the problem of compounding concepts after missing something in chem, but chem was a one year class so I was able to skate by and move on.
I'm not convinced that is the whole or even main reason people dislike maths, it definitely amplifies the problem but I don't think it's the root cause. Though I definitely agree that teaching maths more like teaching a language could be really beneficial.
As someone who LOVED math in school, I hated history classes, because then I had to interpret information that someone could give a great answer to where mine would be subpar. I liked having the right answer and not having to make up my own answer based on facts and theorization, and instead get the single answer through logic Edit: I've had great math teachers and some dickish history ones
Whenever I used to show my mum my maths homework…e.g fractions she’d say “this is nothing like what we used to learn, it used to be so much easier” I wish it still was 😭
When you do calculations in your mind, do you actually visualise the numbers? Asking as a person with Aphantasia 🙃 I've always been drawn to maths, but because of how I was taught maths in school as a child, it really set me up to fail with the way my brain works. I just wish I'd known there were other ways to approach mental maths, without relying on actually seeing the numbers, or relying on visual representations. Well, I guess I have no excuse to not throw out my Reddit browsing habit, and pick up maths again instead >:)
As someone without aphantasia...not really. At least, not for the easier problems. 6x9 I've memorized. 12x17 took a moment, but even then it was only to help me remember some intermediate values, not for actually doing the calculation. For simple algebra problems, I may visualize cancellations and moving things across the equal sign, though I'm not focused on the exact shape and appearance of the numbers and variables so much as their locations. Anything more complex and I'm getting some paper. Also, whether you can do it _in your head_ isn't really important. We have calculators for a reason.
I also have some tricks for mental arithmetic: I've memorized the first 20-odd squares, so I'll rewrite some multiplication problems as a difference of squares. For example, 17x19 = (18-1)(18+1) = 18^2 - 1^2. The difference of consecutive squares is the sum of the bases, e.g. 25^2 - 24^2 = 25 + 24. Useful for squares that are just outside my memorized list. Any time I have to multiply or divide by 5, I convert it to 10/2, as dividing/multiplying by 2 and shifting the decimal point is generally easier. This one's a bit more visual, but when taking the sum or arithmetic mean of several numbers that are relatively close together, I'll take a pair of numbers and move them toward each other simultaneously, like balancing weights on a seesaw. Sometimes when multiplying I'll take a factor of one number and move it to the other, e.g. (12)(3) = (6*2)(3) = (6)(6). Sometimes it helps, sometimes not.
I do but when the numbers are too bing (so 2 two-digits numbers) everyting gets mixed up and I feel like I am lost in some kind of maze of numbers. Probably because I have the wrong method (right to left instead of left to right)
I've got aphantasia too, and the biggest thing for me is memorization of facts. When I started learning math, my teacher recognized that I didn't use visual tools well (like multiplication boxes werent useful, the traditional method made more sense). This was because I couldn't create the boxes in my head (i never even understood the purpose of the boxes--it just took more time to draw. I only learned many years later that people actually could visualize them). Ive got my timetables memorized to 11 (hours and hours of repetition and tricks along with good number sense), and write out anything I can't get to right away. I used to do flashcards all the time as a kid, along with math video games, because my parents thought it was important to emphasize, and i've never lost the skill (probably because I'm a math major). I'd reckon exposure and practice would help develop more of that sense at any age. Gamification is good so long as it's at the right level--feeling the pressure to win at something you don't feel confident in yet isn't a great thing. Practice some to figure out your baseline, and set realisitic goals, and remember that it's something you're trying to do for fun.
I feel like I had writing anxiety when I was in school. Teacher would give us 30 min to write a short essay and I would freeze, start sweating, heart rate increasing, until 10 min remained and I would frantically try and jot something down. This wasn’t because I didn’t understand English (I am a neurotypical native English speaker), but was probably due to all of the factors that you described contributing to math anxiety, except for me it was with writing assignments.
Oh yes I hated those timed writing assignments. I would always do so poorly on those as I would spend 15 minutes just trying to think of how to start it. But when I was given time to write long essays, I would always do well. My teachers were so confused as to why I could barely write anything in 20 minutes but did well on research papers.
As a young child, I -along with the rest of the class- had to drag my chair go a different classroom for math. The sound of scraping chairs on the floor still hurt my ears. The class was big and I couldn’t concentrate. At 8 years old I already was behind in math and I had to study each summer during the holiday to learn the tables. When I was in high school my teacher flat out said girls weren’t as good in math as boys. This video made me realize how much I have come to associate math with punishment or other negative factors. It’s a shame that interest in math has been so discouraged. By I am actually decent in statistics in my field of expertise, so I wonder if I can find a new way and love math
Public compulsory schooling wasn't designed for true education. Conformance, obedience, and just enough rote skills to get by, while at the same time sorting out a select few for the managerial class. The punishment was the point. And the boy/girl thing is only true at the extremes. Given a thousand students over a career. If the ten best math students the teacher ever had, 8 or 9 would be male, but the same thing is true of the 10 worst students. On average there is little difference and most of it evens out with age.
My school had those timed math tests too. But instead of stickers, anyone who finished with all right answers in the one minute either got to eat outside for lunch or got extra recess time. I don't think I finished on time once. This isolated me from friends and showed me that I wasn't smart. I struggled in other areas too. I literally couldn't read until my mom single handedly taught me in 3rd grade (now reading is a favorite hobby). I have AHDH, dyslexia, and math dyslexia (I have no clue how to spell the technical name), but none of those were caught or even considered until adulthood when I put in the effort to find answers. So I spent my entire early years thinking I was stupid, even though I was actually a smart kid. I completed the first draft of a whole novel at age 14 and played multiple instruments (making the top in my state on one) in high school. I was smart. But they didn't see that. When I got older, I actually understood algebra better than my peers. Everyone complained about the letters, but for whatever reason it clicked in my brain a lot of the time. I still struggled, but I was one of 5 kids in my entire school to get top scores on the state test. Geometry was hell. I didn't understand at all and barely made it by. Even in algebra, where my math skills shined, I couldn't do anything in my head. I had to write down every single step, even ones that most of my peers could do in their heads. I got comments about how much paper I wasted because kids are cruel. It's taken years, and I'm still trying to unlearn all of that negative stuff. My teachers told me over and over that I wouldn't have a calculator with me everyday. I understand it was a different time, but they were also super wrong. So who cares if I can't do math mentally. Or when I can it's in some weird way that everyone says is stupid and more complicated than how they were taught? As long as I have the right answer (or close enough to not hurt anyone) then who cares how I got there?
I have diagnosed math anxiety. I had dyslexia and undiagnosed adhd when I was a little kid in the 90’s and my parents didn’t super understand what to do with that so they got frustrated and yelled allot, they were good about helping me with reading but the math but they just didn’t put allot of time into. It didn’t help that my older brother was effortlessly amazing at math, so most of my childhood was “WHY IS THIS SO HARD FOR YOU??? LOOK AT YOUR BROTHER HE’S SO SMART, WHY ARE YOU SO DUMB??” I had special teachers for math, and had math tutors all the way up to high school, shit all the way up through college. I’ve had to retake math 120(algebra) 3 times. Every time I’m in a math classroom I get this intense anxiety, like someone is going to yell at me at any minute. It’s fucking horrible because I love science and computer shit, I love origami and sewing, I love activities that involve math but if you put me in a classroom setting I completely devolve.
*a lot Think of it like this: a few, a little, a bunch, a _whole_ bunch, a lot, a _whole_ lot. "Allot" has a different meaning, related to the word "allotment." It means to divide something and assign different pieces to different people or purposes.
Have you ever looked into dyscalculia? This is the most I've ever related to a comment and I've got it. I never even passed algebra despite having constant tutors and one who lived down the street that I could ask for help whenever.
Literally didn't know math anxiety was a thing but it makes complete sense. My first bad experience with math happened in 3rd grade when we were learning our timetables. Our teacher was the worst when it came to punishments. The one day I had gotten a bad score on our timed quiz I had to sit down and write around 2 pages of the dictionary as my punishment. Later that year on Halloween he told us he would tell our parents to not let us go trick or treating until we finished our math homework. I ended up sitting at my kitchen table that night crying because my dad had told me I wasn't allowed to go trick or treating since I couldn't do my homework. Not even joking from that point on I would completely shut down whenever anyone would ask me a simple math question. I actually cried one time because I couldn't respond. I do so much better with things like quadratic formulas but goddammit I hate simple math.
I have progressively become more and more of a math nerd from the moment I realised that I actually enjoyed maths. It activates my brain in a way that problem solving similarly does. It’s definitely because I grew up with the same, brilliant maths teacher throughout secondary school- who thanks to drilling in the exam questions early on helped me find GCSE maths actually really fun. Because once you know how to do something and how to apply it, is genuinely becomes a sort of puzzle. My favourite way of putting it is that when youre younger, your teachers will take maths (imagine it’s an infinitely scaled painting) and zoom it down into a mere fraction of the full size. Once our brains can comprehend that tiny square, they’ll expand it a little and by using the context we already have from the painting, we understand why those brush strokes were added next. Trying to explain to someone a maths concept before they understand the basics of how it works is like trying to describe a part of the painting they haven’t seen yet- there’s no way youre going to be able to predict what it looks like if youre nowhere close to seeing it. I understand however that some people have a harder time understanding certain topics, but thats not because they’re not smart nor bad. Perhaps they just dont like that particular painting, and they have an easier time interpreting another piece of art- aka another subject. Yes I used an art analogy. I dont regret it. Now that Im starting A level and have been opened up to even more topics (with yet another great teacher) I cant help but get even more excited about what Im learning, because my brain sees that Im using previous knowledge and applying it to topics that otherwise thought looked a lot harder than they were. Its the satisfaction of realising that you have the tools and that you indeed figure out a way to apply them, and once you have it figured out then translating that method into countless other similar problems that gets me so excited. I have become a full blown maths nerd, and I love it.
I'm studying to become a math teacher and I kinda knew that a lot of people struggled with "math-anxiety" but no one ever explained to me what it feels like. thanks for letting me empathise with my future students. love your video's
I only hate math because my future depends on passing the subject while I’m horrifyingly bad at it, plus having to answer in front of a whole class full of people who are actually smart. Of course I can work with numbers on my own when I understand stuff, sometimes I’ve entertained myself doing math exercises, but I still have haunting memories of struggling to even add and subtract from an early age while everyone got to play out in recess because they did understand and finish their work like any normal person would. I’m incredibly stupid and slow and it always shines when maths and physics or chemistry come into play
Hey! I know it’s been months, but I hope you know that not always getting a good score on tests in school having nothing to do with being smart, it’s just a very specialized skill of knowing what your teacher wants. You’re definitely not dumb, and it’s really frustrating when grades hold so much power. In my experience the only people I would consider “dumb” (or times I would consider myself to be dumb) are when people are too arrogant to see a need for improvement, so learning stagnates. Other than this, everyone has the potential to be really good at stuff.
Be sure to find a really smart friend who you can talk to a lot. If he’s a genuine friend, he won’t judge you and will probably ENJOY helping. I feel like people are most receptive to being taught things like this by their friends (if the friend is a decent teacher). I would argue that this can work even better than an amazingly talented teacher sometimes
Just fucking answer regardless of how wrong you are and ask why. Your not going to get better unless you make mistakes. Thankfully though if you apply yourself and get hundreds on the homework it literally starts to get easier. The point of every class is to come out of each lesson having learned the entirety of the material taught. So if there is a single thing you do not understand, you HAVE to ask it regardless of how dumb you think it is. I’ve seen so many students get so scared to ask a question because it might make them look stupid when actually there are 15 other people with the same damn question.
Hey, got to ask you this question. What are you majoring in? Sorry it’s a question of curiosity. If you say anything engineering that’s what put it out of my head for a few years. Now I love math and am doing Chem E.
I think you should have mentioned dyscalculia too, it's a math-related learning disability and it sucks... We basically suffer with mental math mostly, but there are other things too. What I mean is many peeps who aren't good at math and are scared by it may be dyscalculic too.
I didn't know there was a word for it, but I totally have that (i also have dyslexia, so i figured it was related to that). I have to write down anything I try to calculate, even if it is just a finger in the air, or I completely forget what the numbers are or what order they are in.
@@stevegruber4724 I have dyscalculia too and, when reading long numbers, they get jumbled if I don't block them out with my hand and disclose each of the individual figures one by one. Dyslexia is very underdiagnosed (at least where I live), and I think dyscalculia is /even more/ underdiagnosed.
I have Dyscalculia too, I wish more people knew about it because so many things in our society rely on math and it makes me feel really dumb and useless when everyone else can easily understand things that I just can't. I especially hate that I always have to follow my boyfriend around in video games because otherwise I instantly get lost since I can't read maps.
I have dyscalculia too, but now I'm working as a mathematician. Luckily dyscalculia doesn't hinder solving problems anymore, now that we have access to a computer in our pocket and all these useful tools like Wolfram Alpha, MatLab, and Python to supplement our computations. Unfortunately schooling is so stuck in our old ways that students are not taught the skills needed to be able to use these tools effectively. You get punished for needing these tools, it sucks.
Another quick mental multiplication tip - split the number into units, tens then hundreds etc and multiply each of them individually. So for example 12x17 would be 12 x 10 plus 12 x 7 = 204 ( two calculations that can be done much more easily that two digit multiplication)
This is great advice! I wish our math teachers actually taught us this instead of making us figure it out ourselves through thousands of math problems.
it's the 12 x 7 part that would get me stuck bc either i split it up even further (10 x 7 and 7 x 2) and start to forget the unit placements (tens for hundreds, for instance) of all the sums from those broken up calculations.
@@dylanpoynor2318 when i was in elementary school, my class year were "guinea pigs" to a newer method of teaching that did exactly that (breaking stuff up, more explanation of the concepts). Found it very helpful, even if it was tedious at times with writing down every single step.
As a math student, I understand why people don’t like math - it’s because of teachers. I LOVE math and enjoy it SO MUCH, but some of my college professors ruined it for me...
So a little bit of a story. I live in Hong Kong, we can choose to take an elective math class that we call Mathematics Module 2 in high school which covers Calculus, Matrix, Vector and more Algebra(As you can imagine, it is notorious for it's difficulty). But I took it and my first year was miserable. Our teacher is the kind of people who can integrate in Math but can't integrate into society, the class was so boring that I have even considered dropping out of it. But then, the second year around we got a new teacher. He is such a cool guy and I immediately started having interest in Math and worked my way up from the bottom(I had to basically re-learn everything from the first year) and now I am at least half decent at most of them. I might even study it in college(Not sure if this is a good idea but guess we'll see) Teachers really do have an immense impact on people's academic performance.
my experience with math anxiety comes with being a gifted kid. I was always in accelerated/special math and teachers always praised me and I liked the praise. I was scared of being wrong and still am because they might be disappointed in me. my parents never praised me for anything at home so that was my only way of making myself feel good. I had a lot of trouble wording that, ouch
Yes, this! For me, it was also other subjects, where as the tip of the iceberg a teacher used to make fun of me when I got something wrong because my answers were usually flawless. Well, so I panicked everytime I was asked an unexpected question because I knew being wrong was not an option...
This and then when you're the "smart" person in class and you get something wrong, people just completely mock you. I had a friend who 99% of the time was stealing my answers and the 1% if the time she wasn't she was rubbing it in my face that I forgot a step. First time I got a 70% on a test another friend got a few points higher and was all "I guess I'm smarter than you!" And it just made everything so much worse. People suck!
I never have fear of being wrong,but I can relate to feel like being good at math is the only good thing I had, but I were wrong so are you,you are worth more than being the smart kid, sometimes you feel you don't, and doesn't matter if your parents doesn't praise much, probably they are very pride of you,if no who cares,you live for yourself,not for them.
I really like that you mentioned the working left to right method. In school I found "carrying the one" confusing and thought working from big to small made more sense. Even in subtraction (just write the difference with a minus in front) then afterwards add up all the resulting numbers. It takes a bit longer but it made much more sense (my teachers did not like me doing this though :))
Teachers were always telling me I did the things wrong. I would be getting the correct answers but was somehow still wrong because I did it "the wrong way". It is the first thing I did that was wrong while my answers were correct.
@@lampyrisnoctiluca9904 same, though mine accepted it though. If it was correct and I understood it they were fine with it. Though they’d prefer if I did it their way lol
when doing mental maths, I go left to right, as it is easier to keep track of everything, however on paper, I'd say right to left is better, as it's quicker and takes less space in the page
As another person with a math degree who gets into weird mental spaces when I try to do arithmetic, this resonates so hard. My experience has been that most people don't actually hate math; they hate their experience in math class. And that's totally valid! But fortunately, it's also considerably more fixable, and it's hard to overemphasize how valuable being able to do basic number crunching in your head without feeling anxiety can be. I use it literally all the time in tabletop games like Warhammer, but I *also* use it when skimming news headlines to realize "yeah that statistic has to be seriously cherry picked because that cannot possibly generalize or else everyone would be dead already".
I love Kyne! Happy to see her here. And yes, math anxiety still a problem for me and I do retail! Math teachers were impatient with anyone who couldn't answer immediately and that affected me.
I think a lot of math anxiety can be traced back to our extremely broken american school system. For whatever reason, in my experience, math was given WAY more focus than any other subject. It is frightening to me how many people I went to school with were so good at math that they were legit taking college entry classes, yet couldn't formulate a simple paragraph to save their lives and genuinely had the literary precision of a grade schooler. It's really frustrating to be someone like me, who is far more interested and did better with literature and literary studies and creative writing, but be viewed as a failure because math is extremely difficult for me. Deadass, I've had teachers who view literature focused people as lazy or unintelligent.
My high school was the EXACT opposite. I was always more math-minded. Numbers made sense to me, Beowulf not so much. This made me an automatic failure. I loved to read (still do) but I didn't love to read what our English teachers did (if it was written after 1599, it was garbage to them).
You think you're the only one? Everyone in my class is OBSESSED with doing math homework and almost ONLY that. They treat math like some sort of killer god or sumn
You need to develop your logical functions. Research MBTI. It sounds like you have a high amount of extroverted intuition (which is good with ideas), and low amounts of introverted thinking or extraverted thinking. I think you are an ENFP.
So basic, mental math is all I can do. In highschool, my algebra teacher would bring us in front of the whole class, show us a solution, and make us hit a "that was easy" button. Then we would repeat the problems on Fridays and if we got it wrong, we hit a "doh" button. Looking back on it, he was just trying to make it fun. But I remember the 6th or 7th week of the year, I still hasn't gotten a single problem right, and the pressure to get it done quickly and while people were watching was what stopped me. I would freeze up because I was ashamed of how long it took me. And that's why i have math anxiety on complex problems. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.
I can confidently say that math does elude me. Even at a young age I was super bad at it. My mother would scold me for not trying hard enough or not focusing (foreshadowing). Just sit down and do it. I ended up having to take summer school nearly every year of middle school and high school just to keep up. Even to this day sometimes basic math causes me to go catatonic looking at the page. Oh and the foreshadowing part, I'm in my 30's now, and at the urging of my therapist, I got tested for ADHD and turns out yeah. I've been struggling with ADHD apparently my whole life.
In elementary school we also did those times tables sheets. We had other games too, which often maximized humiliation among peers. I hated math and didn't think it was for me at all. It wasn't until highschool when I realized that there was more to math, and I could actually be good at it. When problems stopped being about mental calculations, and started being about solving problems, I felt much better about it.
This is a very relatable problem for me, just not with math. At school we’d always have a quota of how many books we had to read each month. This made me always feel very rushed and absolutely hate reading. Ever since middle school i’ve avoided it like the plague whenever i could. Only recently a had the courage to actually pick up a book voluntarily and it’s not even that bad.
yeah....schools obliging people to read DOES NOT motivate them to read SPECIALLY when everyone has to read the same fucking book, its like going to a cake shop and saying: hey guys look at all this cake, cake is delicious, so many flavors! 'oh so can we pick one?' no we are all getting that one, every is eating the same flavor of cake, and also you have to remember its taste for the test like bro wtf i got into reading fantasy coz of my dad giving me a random percy jackson book and i was like idk 11 or 12 but i never ever read a school book because holy fucking shit did i have negative interest in such titles
@@yankokassinof6710 exactly, we had to read ‘adult books’ which basically meant ‘vague, boring and unnecessarily depressing’. That does not at all sound fun or enticing.
that's so true. Although I actually enjoyed some of the school reads more so I enjoyed one particular read. I wanted to keep reading but I just can't get myself to pick up a book nowadays.
For me it was writing papers, especially in-class essays. And any form of public speaking. School basically turns everything that could be enjoyable into a giant pain in the ass.
This was me as a child. I’m a slow reader (at least compared to my peers) so it was always so discouraging when I would never meet my quotas. My teachers always made me feel so stupid about it too. It always felt unfair how my teachers praised students who hated math but the minute you hated reading, it meant you wouldn’t amount to anything. I only learned to like reading once I was able to do it at my own pace for fun.
Math anxiety could be unrelated to math entirely (and you definitely touched on this at one point); if we look at how people are rewarded and, more importantly, /punished/ when individuals get something "wrong" we can start to see where the avoidance behavior forms. We /punish/ wrong answers, mistakes, failures, etc. When a math test can be used to determine your entire future... it's obvious why people develop anxiety and avoidance.
I was very used to being wrong at math after 12 years of over-questioning everything my teachers told me to follow 'jst cause' and it didn't get better unless I was in a real-world situation in which I found it to be much less complicated and that I was almost always at least somewhere if not exactly in the right ball-park. Loved this study so much
The only math class i’ve ever truly enjoyed and succeeded at was Geometry because visualizing angles and shapes made sense to me in a way that numbers never could. This was an interesting video but I think i’d rather stick to subjects that allow me to visualize and interpret things in my own way
For some reason this comment resonated a lot with me. I consider myself much better at geometry because it isn’t abstract and can be visualized properly by my mind
@TheGlassesPro Same here. I feel like the way Geometry is taught (or tested) in South Africa makes things more difficult. I have a friend who didn't do so well in Matric too. I suggest you try registering for the upcoming rewrite if possible. From there perhaps you could take a bridge year. Best of luck to you bro
@@LarisB Neither arithmetic nor algebra are abstract... like, not at all. You just failed to understand (Or were never tought) the entire point of how and why use them I´ve hated maths for my entire life, until 6 months ago when i decided to finally confront them and follow my passion for space science and swap my major from cooking (2 years in) to physics. This week I got admited to the uni I was keen on aplying to and now I´m only two months away from starting this next chapter in my life. I can say with certainty that I now like (If not love) maths. My entire school era was plagued with failed math courses and spending my summer in school so I could pass on to the next year. All I can say is there´s a lot of factors in question. Mainly your will to learn and study, maturity, and each individual´s personal learning experience at school or early years in general. I´ve had to wait till im 20 years old so i can finally confront my irrational hate and fear towards numbers and it´s the most alive and fun (although tedious) I´ve felt and had since ages.
Thanks for this video! I'm a high school math teacher, and, among other things, I teach basic skills math. These are the students who struggle profoundly with math anxiety. My heart really goes out to these students, because, as you've pointed out, they are struggling precisely because of their fear of failure. In other words, these aren't the students who don't care about school. They aren't the ones refusing to work. Instead, they are the ones who care so deeply that they won't settle for anything but certainty, and that insistence on certainty has caused them to be paralyzed with anxiety about math. This caused a downward spiral of confidence and ability, until they eventually shut down. In addition to the ideas you've mentioned, I'd like to point out two strategies that can help students overcome math anxiety. 1. Make sure that students interact with math in a way that is not mandatory or transactional. If you think about it, the worst thing you can do for somebody afraid of math is to make sure that they only interact with it when their grade depends on it, and failure could be detrimental to their progress through school. This sort of captive, iron-fisted approach to education leads to a horribly unhealthy relationship with the content. If the only reason to do math is to avoid failure, then the only motivation for math is fear. There is no way to overcome math anxiety if you are only motivated by fear. Instead, I try to present my students each day with a discussion about a completely approachable problem that will never be graded. In fact, they usually don't even have to write anything down. Instead, we talk about ideas and approaches as a class, and we *seriously* celebrate our victories. This leads to a relationship with math that is not motivated by fear, but intrigue. 2. Ask the right questions. For my basic skills math class, I've really taken a liking to the "Is this possible?" type of questions. (For examples, see "The Bridges of Koenigsberg," "The Four Color Theorem," and "The Utilities Problem"). These types of questions are more approachable because you can't really fail if the problem might be impossible. Instead, you can take a few stabs at it, then take your best guess. Now... Can I brag for a moment? When asking these questions, I find that I often have students insisting that something *is* possible, when in fact it isn't. These are the same students that would shut down at the beginning of the year. What changed? They got used to the idea that persistence in math yields positive results, and the fear of failure was gone. At that point, they started to fall in love with the process of hunting down an answer. In other words, they started to fall in love with math. My point is, math anxiety can be fixed, and the best way to go about it is to consider how to build a more healthy relationship with math. Interact with it voluntarily, value questions just as much as answers, and embrace the possibility of failure. I think you'll be happier for the trouble.
I wish I had you as a teacher. My math skills aren't horrible but I do get anxious due to a focus on not 'failing/making a mistake', and I feel like being in an environment where I would been encouraged to try regardless would've helped a lot.
It's crazy, in university a lot of students would take easy classes to complement their major and GPA score rather than picking minors they're interested in yet a bit challenging. When I went to my macro and microeconomics course, the teacher was sloppy, and the classroom had about 300 students, already you can predict how that went. I hated it also to be honest, but when I paid for a tutoring class made up of 30 other students, I loved it! The tutor seemed to be only a few years older than me, but she was attentive to the students and even asked a few of us if we understood when we look perplexed, I included. She taught it so well and got me so interested in it that I decided to minor in it, never regret it ever since. It's a shame that the qualification and pay of being a good teacher are so low.
I didn't do well at math as a kid (I don't remember it particularly stressing me out, just out of mostly "A"s, math was one of maybe 2 C subjects). Then in gr 6 it just clicked, I ended up a chapter ahead, learning the gr 7 math (listening in since it was a 6/7 split class), making tools to help the class visualize. Later grades I started figuring out easier ways to solve things (and my teacher rewarded it), and ended up getting math awards and taking enriched math (same as gifted, but single subject instead of whole course load). A lot of (if not most of) the mental tools and tricks I use now I figured out from observing and testing patterns - they were never taught. Ironically, now I've forgotten all the formulas I learned in school (except pythagorean theorem, use that one all the time), and get very confused and physically pained trying to figure out how to calculate something (like how do I combine these variables into a formula to get the answer I'm looking for). It often takes several days, research (that's fruitless half the time because I don't understand it), and many wrong answers before I get it. I also sometimes just don't bother with the math, and make random/nonrandom generators to try and work out if/what the answer(s) are, using approximated results instead of the precise probabilities
Math anxiety is one of the reasons that, when I was working in afterschool recreation programs, I always tried to push DnD as an activity. In addition to a lot of passive math skills that are being associated with fun, it teaches problem solving, vocabulary/literacy, social skills, and teamwork. Great game for kids, though you may need to adjust some stuff for your age group
I love math, it makes me really happy, and it's calming in a lot of ways for me (probably my autism talking lol) but I have had periods in my life where I hated math class, and it was never about the numbers, it was about teachers making me feel stupid when I did things differently than they did, or I took longer to understand a concept. I'm glad I received the support I needed outside of the classroom, and eventually made it to ap physics, where I really realized how to apply math to the real world. My physics teacher not only supported me when my home life was a mess, but he also taught through real world examples. He'd have us set up an experiment, then tell us to figure out, say, velocity, and then we'd figure out what the formula was on our own and as a class before he taught us the one the book had. It just made everything click for me.
Am autistic too but I absolutely despise math not cause of bad experience or teachers but cause of how math is overly complex for my autistic brain that why I love art easy to understand and no nonsensical stuff
"I'd rather make fun of myself then a fool out of myself" is so relatable i can't even. This really helped me figure out why I just got an 14/15 in my pharmacology-mathS exam at 26yo, but absolutely flunked every single mathS exam i ever had from 6-18yo. The only thing happening inbetween is a lot of cashier work (exposure) and some general anxiety therapy (learning how to take a breath and not panic).
Even though I did fail math last year, I still got a 92% of math this year (exams class tests homework notes mix together) as well this year was my first year of alegebra I could say I'm pretty proud of myself
Ok so for me, when I was in primary school I loved it - hated long multiplication sheets we did in class (like they just printed a new one each day sometimes) but ViHart was my favourite RUclipsr. I loved videos like Cookie Shapes and What's the Deal with Pythagoras? Her music and Pi videos and interesting Geometry (like the plant ones) made me so interested! Then come secondary school and I spent all of first year trying to enjoy maths when I couldn't. It was horrible. But now when I hear a topic like Pythagoras' theorem in class, I realise that my early experiences in maths are the reason that it was easier for me than some people. I am thankful for that.
The way math is taught is so exclusionary and demoralizing. I really wish kids were taught in schools the ways math can be fun and beautiful. I think the only reason why I love math today was vi hart and a couple of good math teachers
A big trick in math is simplifying/converting something you can't do into something you can; E.G. 6*7: A: 2*3*7 ==> 2*21 ==> 42 B: 6*6+6 ==> 36+6 ==> 42 E.G. 9*6 A: 10*6 - 6 ==> 60-6 ==> 54 B: 3*3*6 ==> 3*18 ==> 3*20 - 3*2 ==> 60-6 ==> 54 E.G. 12*17 A: 10*17 + 2*17 ==> 170 + 2*17 ==> 170 + 2*10 + 2*7 ==> 170+20+14 ==> 204 B: 12 * 20 - 3*12 ==> (12*2)*10 - (3*6)*2 ==> 240 - 18*2 ==> 240 - (20*2 - 2*2) ==> 240 - (40-4) ==> 240 - 36 ==> 204 Really how you get there is unimportant, and playing with numbers in this way is kind of "fun" too. Edit: Lol, turns out that's what this video is about xD
When I was little, I was considered “gifted” so I never had to ask for help with anything My little brother wasn’t “gifted” tho, so he would ask our dad for help when our mom was at work I remember just my dad yelling all the time because my brother wouldn’t understand, and then he would start crying, my my dad got louder asking why he’s crying So there’s my childhood trauma! How are you guys doing?
This brings back so many memories, I think this was one of the reasons why I hate math, I’ve never been good at it and during my formative years of first being taught multiplications my mom would yell at me because I didn’t understand it after she explained to me several times. One time I cried too much that my nose bleed and my math hw was cover with blood, sweat, and tears, literally.
@@ariiblink omg…I was always too scared to stand up to my dad in fear he would yell at or hit me, I hope you and your mother have a good relationship now
Ah yes, I was the little brother in your story only except I was the older sibling. Did your little brother have to stay up super late until they somehow understood the assignment? I tried as much as possible to ask my mom for help because my dad kind of sucked at explaining how to do something. My brother had a similar issue but with english assignments because creative writing isn't his thing. I'm starting to get why my insomnia started to happen as a kid now that I write this comment..
wow this does bring back memories! I was also a slow learner back in elementary... I am untill now, but it was way worse back then, like... I had to draw 1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1 all over the edges of my math book till it reaches like 138, just so I can multiply it to another "set of ones", like how stupid is that?!?! sure enough, I was crying the whole time in class because I recognized how slow my comprehension was compared to the rest of my class. btw, no one was rly being aggressive at me (or maybe I repressed that memory), but the humiliation is really freaking killing me, so I transferred schools after that (I already threw this memory down the gutter, man. I can't believe that a RUclips comment has the ability to unlock this sht wtf 😂 I srsly didn't remember why I transferred so thanks for the reminder)
weirdly, my overwhelming math anxiety went away after i decided to challenge myself by taking a difficult math class. i was transferred to a higher grade math class in 6th grade (so i studied 7th grade math in 6th) but no one ever taught me the material i had skipped so i always felt 3 steps behind in all of my advanced math classes, while all my peers looked confident and said everything was easy. in ap calculus, though, i had a notoriously difficult teacher and for the first time in my life i wasn’t the only one who didn’t know what the hell was going on. there was a weird, supportive camaraderie in the class because we all knew EVERYONE was struggling and over time i started seeing math as a fun challenge to be solved rather than an panic attack waiting to happen. over time (and with the help of a study group) i found myself consistently getting some of the highest grades in the class, it was a very strange and wonderful experience
I went into engineering school for this exact reason… My maths anxiety dates back to a primary school teacher who regularly bullied me in front of the class, but somehow more advanced abstract subjects freak me out a lot less x)) I’m more at ease with linear algebra than basic calculus, it’s a bit fucked up
@@sofialpaca2563 Actually, it isn't. Those two things work completely differently and, as far as I know, you utilize different brain reagions for them as well. I've heard about people suffering from dyscalculia (like dyslexia, but for numbers and basic operations) who went on to study math. It's really not the same. You sometimes have to calculate things in math, that's true. But sometimes you also have to saw through bone in medicine. That doesn't make medicine sawing. (Maybe, as far as analogies go, that one's more on the clunky side, but I hope it's clear what I'm trying to say.)
For me, it was teachers forcing me to "show my work" instead of just letting me get the answer in my head. And wouldn't ya know it, my mental math suffered for for it.
This is one of my biggest pet peeves, as someone who struggles to put conclusions into words. There is no reason for them to do that unless they themselves need to know what the heck their talking about.
@@epicmarschmallow5049 Because it breaks flexibility. I'm sure we've all experienced getting the answer right but it's wrong cause the way we got to that answer wasn't up to the teacher's standard. Who cares how you got the answer? I got the answer right, move on!
The whole reason you’re told to show you’re working, is because later on when it’s impossible to get the answer without writing your working, you’ll struggle massively, because you haven’t practiced enough. If you’ve always skipped writing the first and/or second step, you’re going to try skipping the third and fourth as well. If you then get it wrong, how are you going to know why?
yeah, when you need to compare an offer between buying something for 144 dolars or 13x12 i guess you'll just have to call your mom to do the math for you, or pull out your calculator and do the math 3x slower than your average chinese 10 year old. Good solution actually.
@@luizcastro5246 If you are making a decision that is important enough to require math you should probably take your time anyway. There is rarely a rush and I’ve always got a calculator.
I think it's the fact that at some point, math classes can be useless yet we HAVE to learn them and doing badly in them can harm our grade and makes our degrees and graduations much more difficult. Like, I have to focus on Statistics and Chemistry classes that I wouldn't even actually use in my career nor would I remember them after the class is over. And doing all those complex math problems and working hard for something that feels worthless in the long run just feels like a waste of money, time and just makes my life difficult for absolutely no reason.
yes this is my exact thought. it goes for all classes we are forced to take that go beyond basic stuff you need to know when you should go more into it only if you want to
Yep, I feel that as soon as you learn percentages math becomes useless. Why would I need Trigonometry or calculus when I want to presume a career in art? All it does is stress me out.
But I mean that goes for every subject in a way, unless a really good teacher teaches it. I mean I don’t use most of the stuff I learned in german nowadays(I’m german) and I absolutely hated it - more of a science school person. It’s rather that there’s such a big fear of math/ hatred that so many people see it as unnecessary in my opinion. Obv not everyone.
@@StarlightNkyra And why do I need art when I want to pursue a career in maths? (More like, IT stuff, but still) It's not like maths is the only subject that after a certain points will deal with stuff not everyone will use, I'd go as far as saying all subjects are like that for someone Depends on the school system though
when i was in primary (elementary) school i was sooo good at maths - like doing maths tests two years above me. as soon as i got to secondary (middle/high school) i was placed with other boys who are some of the best mathematicians in the uk, and i soon realised that i wasnt some maths prodigy. the first est i got back i did one of the worst in the class and this humiliation was compounded by the fact that when the teacher revealed someone got full marks the whole class was dead set it was me (because id got the first a* in english). as time went on maths became harder and harder and harder - i still somehow managed to work my way up from bottom to top set but i didnt get top marks in GCSEs like the rest of my class did. maths anxiety is something i resonate with, ive always been particularly worked up during maths tests/exams, but especially if any sort of problem solving is required. as soon as the answer is not immediately obvious i feel my brain shrivel up in embarrassment and anger at myself because i know my peers would know how to answer the question almost immediately.
My first math-specific memory was in second grade when I was struggling with subtraction. I hadn’t finished a worksheet by the time everyone else was done, so my teacher had me sit in the hallway alone until I finished while, she taught the next lesson to everyone else. My worst math-specific memory was in my one required math course in college. We started every class with a quiz, and it was pretty common that the professor would pick up the quizzes before I had finished. I advocated for myself and told him I needed more time, and he was extremely kind and understanding. Unfortunately, it backfired. Next time we took a quiz, everyone had finished but me, and he announced to the class that “some people are still working, please stay quiet, blah blah blah.” But it was OBVIOUSLY just me. So I felt like the whole class was staring at me. I don’t know if I even finished the quiz, I might have just given up. And I don’t remember how exactly it happened, but I do remember that I ended up leaving class early crying after asking a dumb question and hearing some giggling. It was brutal.
Not in case of math,but I've learned to ignore the giggling.Atleast you've made an effort,and THAT MATTERS. If you've done a mistake,learn from it,bit by bit,and it'll be worth it.
I hated maths because when I was younger, my dad used to scream at me when I didn’t know the answer, teachers did the same thing. Now, im giving maths a chance again
My difficulty with math has always been lack of confidence and how we were made to learn it with time pressure. I don't cope well with short time limits - deadlines weeks in advance are fine, but if I only have a few minutes to do something my mind goes completely blank and I become paralysed because all I can think about is the clock ticking down. I learn much better working at my own pace, but that wasn't an option for me in school. Rather than allowing me to start slow and increase my speed naturally as I became better and more confident, I felt forced to work to someone else's pace that I wasn't confident in. I remember once in grade 4 they had us do timed 2 times tables and then everyone in the class who got 100% stood up, and I was the only one not standing. I was then told off and it was so humiliating I wanted to die. It wasn't that I didn't know the answers, it was that I couldn't take the pressure. And it's pressure that I don't face in my adult life so it was completely unnecessary - there has never been a time where I absolutely need to do a times table on the spot in a few seconds. There were times in high school, with specific teachers, where I actually really enjoyed maths and excelled at it. I actually had FUN doing EQUATIONS. But then I'd go back to more traditional maths teachers and my hatred/anxiety would return. I honestly think that the way math is taught is a major contributor to why so many people hate it and struggle with it.
I tutored math for like 25 years and the two big chunks I usually had to deal with were the emotions of the student and then the fiddly bits of actually doing math.
All of these problems really are just mental health problems, or people having bad experiences with bad teachers or abusive parents. Math is math and it's really just a concept that you need to familiarize yourself with to understand, like any other concept or subject. Some people don't have a natural talent but most people have the ability to learn it. Since teachers are bad at teaching, struggling students don't realize that the reason they are struggling is not because they aren't cut out to do math but because they don't understand the fundamentals behind why math is done. But since the curriculum sucks, there's no time to explore that so only the kids with a natural inclination towards it succeed. If you can learn anything, there's no reason why you wouldn't be able to learn math, unless you have a mental illness or disagree with math as a whole.
@@sebaschan-uwu I couldn't memorize my times tables the entire time of K-12. I would get to where I would remember them for a while, but then when there was periods where I didn't do multiplying much (like summers off in particular) I would forget them completely. I was horrible at anything requiring mental math. It was like my brain would lock up when it came to doing math. I hated math with a passion so didn't go to college or anything like that because I didn't see how I could possibly succeed if math was gonna be required. Later in my early 30's I revisited the times tables to see if I could do any better than when I was a kid. With a little work I was able to memorize them much easier somehow. It's like some connections I previously was unable to access were now active. Would've been nice if it worked that way while I was in school. I think living out in the real world had something to do with it, because sitting in a classroom not actually doing anything in the real world is non-conducive to learning for me.
My dad was a maths teacher and he'd berate us for failing it. It made me even more anxious to the point of hating it and giving up. I literally chose to become a lawyer because it involved the least amount of maths. I still had to do two maths courses in law school though (Accounting for Lawyers).
@@snakeflake7773 And? It's not as easy as saying, "Well they obviously failed because they were lazy!" You don't know the context, and it's a bit rude to just assume that is the one and only reason. Maybe their dad put too much pressure on them. Maybe they had other things going on in their life. You would never know.
@@snakeflake7773 you’re making an absolute clown of yourself with your stupid comments. You don’t know the other person’s lived experiences, stop assuming
That game is actually really useful. When I was tutoring highschoolers, a large part of their problem was often that they were just too slow because they were bad at basic arithmetic. Because everything builds on that, they were just struggling to get through their assignments and would fall behind. I'd advise them to play a very similar game for practice, and it seemed to really help. As an aside, I'd also advise to just learn the tables for 1-12 by heart (ie repeat them until there's just no more thought involved between someone asking 6x7 and you saying 42). When those basic calculations are just baked into your brain, everything else becomes a lot faster.
When you tutor kids + recommend they memorize the times tables, are they memorizing how to solve them, or just the answers? I've never been able to memorize the times tables, and I've been trying to get tested for dsycalculia since I was 16 because I just can't understand maths 👀
@@doctorwholover1012 just memorizing the answers. Of course it's also important to learn to do multiplication, but you shouldn't have to do that for those basic versions. It's important to get to the point where getting the answer to something like 8x7 is no longer a matter of calculation but of retrieval, or you're just spending too much time and mental effort on it to move on to the more interesting parts of mathematics that build on it (algebra, calculus, trigonometry, probability...).
I'd also recommend learning 16-times (you can skip 11-15) and powers of two as well. Multiples of 16 and powers of two come up all the time in computing.
When I was 7, my father made me cry and hide in the dog's basket because I couldn't read 50 - I kept reading it as 15. I only just now realised that might have traumatised me into math anxiety.
Hope you enjoyed the video! You can find the math game on our Patreon (www.patreon.com/answerinprogress).
If you aren't in the position to support us on Patreon just yet, we'll be releasing the game with the next edition of our free newsletter (www.answerinprogress.com/newsletter).
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Every time when I'm doing a math expression my brain shuts down and goes like this:
"Ok, this multiplied by this is 6.....(after 4 minutes).....3? No, I'm probably wrong."
Mental math is not math, it is just computation. Computation has little to do with mathematics. Calling mental math "math" is like calling "youtubing" real job.
PS. I do love math and don't have math anxiety and sometimes zone out by mental math especially before sleeping which helps me relax but I still do consider mental math as little more than musings like rubics cube solving sport. Not real math.
The newsletter link seems to be wrong, it seems that the ')' was accidentally included.
@@saumitrachakravarty but youtubing is a real job
Yeah definitely bad teacher, lol. Turns out I have a learning disability (if you want to call it that) where I can't memorize beyond a certain point. I understand the material, can do the tests, but can't memorize. I'm a music major, you can imagine how that worked out!
When children are taught that fast mental math is being successful in maths (think of the “60 seconds” quizzes) and that you can’t be wrong (the insistence on having high grades or you get scolded/punished), it’s no wonder that people have math anxiety
And this is the story of how I end up with crippling perfectionism
exactly this.
I agree that it’s ridiculous to think that speed is equal to success. But fast mental math absolutely helps you to be successful in math. It allows you focus more on the underlying concepts, so the tedium of solving simple algebraic equations, expanding/factoring expressions, rearranging terms, etc. can all happen in the background.
I teach high school students who can’t sketch polynomials because they can’t factor, and that’s usually down to the fact that they don’t know their times tables. Teaching students different ways of visualizing and conceptualizing multiplication is great and should be the standard. But you also need to drill times tables with those “minute quizzes” you mentioned, so that in the future, multiplication can happen in the background and not get in the way of the actual problem solving. Far too many students these days can’t tell me what 9•7 is.
@@sfumato8884 I agree with you, but I just wanted to ask if you actually "know" your times tables, or if you have just memorized the answers to the times tables?
@@sfumato8884 I’m an adult and to this day I still use a finger counting trick for the 9 times tables, which in grade school was actively frowned upon.
Mental math is helpful when you don’t have access to a calculator (which in the modern day is rare when a lot of people have smartphones with a calculator on them), yes, but how I learned to factor polynomials was also through a trick (the FOIL method). I did not and still do not care about understanding the integral concepts of math as long as I know enough to get me by, and I’d reckon a lot of students feel the same. They just want good marks (I can also attest to this - I finally graduated high school a few months ago and the only thing that mattered to me was getting a decent grade).
The last math courses I did was on statistics and consumer mathematics and I was fine with just using a calculator for everything (saved me a bunch of energy & time). I can say the same for the course before that one, which was geometry. Mental math is helpful but not necessary when the majority of people carry around a calculator on their phone
Sometimes "math anxiety" is just a symptom of being abused as a consequence of being wrong during our formative years.
yeah
@@donkkonk5293 riveting comment you have there
I feel that too much
Yeah, also the things we are taught in school do not reflect on the things mathematics are really about. (After note: Sorry. I got carried away about the why of mathematics 🤦🏼♂️🤷🏼♂️)
If I somehow end up going to elementary or high school education, I would try a new method: instead of giving them formulas in a plate, I would describe a problem with real world context and then either give the steps for them to do and derive the results by themselves or I would guide them through whichever idea they got for solving the problem.
I like more the second option because most of the time we'd be wrong and hopefully they'll learn this lesson: being wrong is more important than being right.
And it is more important because mathematics are not about being right and doing operations quickly by head. The core of mathematics is to create problems and then create the tools to solve them, and this is only possible by messing up over and over again.
And there is no solvable problem that has only one way to solve.
And this is the part where maths are quite essential for everyone, you gain the ability of creating tools for solving problems that show up in your day to day lives, even personal problems. Obviously, using "maths" for personal problems would be more on the philosophy side of things, but philosophy and pure maths are almost the same thing, just changing the objects inside the line of thought.
"I SAID WHEN JOHNNY HAS 4 APPLES"
I stopped hating math when I got a teacher that encouraged us to learn and started with the very basics. He didn't think any questions were stupid (even the ones that should've been obvious or easy for our class) and always let us sit in his classroom, even when he had other classes. If we had bad days, we were allowed in his office and he'd always listen if we wanted to talk, and he always, ALWAYS, helped us when we didn't understand.
In my last year of high school, I skipped a lot of classes and stayed home a lot due to chronic pain and mental health issues, but came back the last few months. Since I had missed most of his class, he sat me down one afternoon and we made up a schedule where he'd be able to teach me enough of the class to at least give me a proper grade. He took a lot of his free time to help me and he didn't even seem to mind. That was really what did it for me - he thought math was so much fun that he didn't mind working overtime to teach us. He made math fun and his class felt a lot like the first few years of school did, when you want to learn everything, all at once. I went from an E or a D to an A in the span of a few months.
I wasn't the only one, either. When he was going to quit his job to take another one in a town over, most of the students begged him to stay. He did stay, in the end. I think he's still there and he's one of the best teachers I've ever had.
I went through a very similar time, except i also made a smart friend and he's one of the main reasons that i started to like math again
Damn, I sure as hell wish I was you, I had the worst math teachers and it made me hate the idea of math, the type of teachers that made you feel guilty or embarrassed for not catching on. I wish my younger self made contact with your teacher.
Gosh, that's such a heartwarming story! Tells just how big of a difference a good teacher can make. But huge respect for you as well! Getting from E to A definitely takes hard work and dedication, especially after a break even with a great teacher. Hope you're doing well health-wise and wish you all the best!
Damn, that's a role-model right there.
You are so lucky!
I have a friend who is better at computing mentally than me so my friend would give me random math question whenever im near them and expect me to answer right away. And whenever I stress out and tell them a wrong answer, they would laugh and tell me "Its so simple??, my younger sibling could do that in 2 seconds!". This made me so scared of being with my friend that i started avoiding them. Whenever we were forced to get together (group project or partners), i would get SO MUCH anxiety by just being beside them. But whenever i take my time and learn, i actually understand 90% of it, thats why my math exams scores are high.
Im VERY slow at computing mentally BUT I KNOW WHAT IM DOING AND WHAT IT IS, JUST GIVE ME A SECOND PLEASE AND DONT MAKE FUN OF ME FOR NOT ANSWERING IT CORRECTLY IN LESS THAN 2 SECONDS.
jerk friend. I can't think under pressure because invasive thoughts are LOUD, and that sort of competitive behavior pushed me away of math(now I study math in university and I enjoy it)
I agree alot with you, Andi can't think clearly when in pressure as well, so I understand both of you.
I feel this. I don't have quick math skills but I am very good at basic algebra. My math anxiety comes more from complex formulas and graphing, so you could imagine what it was like being an insomniac with an accelerated geometry class at 7:30am with chemistry the period right after. Complete brain fog every day.
You know what. He she is competitive. That person wants to prove and test how he compares to others. That perdon is a good challenge how to work hard and be on your toes. Just dont take his antics seriously. I bet he works hard too and is thereofre fast at problem solving. You need speed. So its good to mentally fast as well. If its not what you want to do. Understandablw have a nice day.
@@cpostclothesrack2012 why should they have to compete? sounds like a bad friend, putting them down to feel good. i'm guessing you do that too
90% of my experience with maths was bad, but the other 30% was pretty good
Yogi Berra once said of baseball "90% of the game is half mental"
Uhhh, who’s gonna tell him
@@hypnoxxer that's the inner joke bud
@@jonathanzuckerberg8850 that is not necessarily wrong, maybe just not very well put: 90% of the game is 50% mental, so the mental part of of the game is 45%.
Guess you had 20% of having a bad, but pretty good time, which isn’t impossible.
I feel like the problem is also based in math being teached as something to memorize, like memorize the times tables instead of math being analytical.
I’d liked to expand on that thought-we’re(atleast in my country’s education system) taught to memorize maths BEFORE we are taught that it can be analytical.
From the moment we’re introduced to math we’re told to memorize formulas or like you said times tables, but we’re not taught how they’re analytically derived or developed. Then, when we’re later introduced to the more analytical side of math we get whiplash, suddenly surprised that math can get *that* meticulous and it wards many people off.
My best math teacher had us create formulas for problems from scratch-that really opened my mind to maths analytical nature. It was so mind-opening.
But by no means do I think teaching memorization is bad because it is a fundamental part of math. After all if you’re breaking down 5 * 6 into six individual fives added together or using mental gymnastics to subtract numbers(i.e ‘subtracting 9 from a two digit number lowers the tens place by 1 and increases the ones place by 1’) then solving complex math would take too long.
@@brickbuildersunited When I was a kid I just outright refused to memorize the multiplication table, because I had ADHD and autism and nobody ever thought it was important to give me a good reason to memorize it. (It turns out that there is a somewhat good reason to memorize it because it makes doing mental arithmetic a lot easier, and I was really bad at doing mental arithmetic for years and would always rely on a calculator. But for some reason, they never actually tried to teach me the connection between multiplication algorithms and times tables. Then again, *even if* that had been explained to me, I'm not sure I would've been able to convince myself to actually memorize it due to ADHD.) But I was fortunate to find math itself inherently interesting so once I got to pre-algebra and the analytical stuff I excelled. I'm still pretty bad at arithmetic but after enough years of it you do eventually just memorize most of the multiplication table without even explicitly trying so I've gotten better. You can also use the principles of algebra to simplify arithmetic expressions so that also helps. I'm glad that my difficulty with arithmetic never lent itself to forming an anxiety about it though.
I feel like I was going somewhere in particular with this comment but I lost my train of thought. Oh well.
@@brickbuildersunited I was taught the same way:D
for real! and sometimes they don't bother to explain why something is like that even when it's easy to do so! I didn't even know that 6x3 = 6+6+6 until I was in college??? wild
@@mac8697 sorry if i sound mean, but I don't believe you. that is pretty much the definition of multiplication, and you would have to be incredebly bad at maths not to realise it.
Math, by its nature, is extremely precise and unforgiving of mistakes. It is easy to understand why people dislike working hard on a long math problem and still getting it wrong due to making one small mistake in one of the steps to solve the problem.
However, I think that a bigger issue, based on my experience, is the fact most teachers can't teach effectively. Teachers may have deep specialized knowledge in a certain field, but this does not mean that they can communicate that knowledge effectively to students. Furthermore, I think that because they have devoted themselves to a certain field, they really don't understand why students don't love the field as much as they do and find the field difficult.
"Teachers may have deep specialized knowledge in a certain field, but this does not mean that they can communicate that knowledge effectively to students."
^This.
People often tend to forget that teaching is an entire skill, art, and field of its own. Just because a person is good at something, it doesn't necessarily mean they must also be good at teaching it as well.
tbh i like math, but each time i have an exam at home, there's one exercice that i f* myself up while doing the final presentation
+ the long writtings, it's like in french class, gotta write a two page essay for a freaking theorem.
+ it's hard sometimes, this year after summer's vacation i didn't understand anything, they did all the hard things first, we were all lost and annoyed with the work.
+ getting an exam every week.
+ and yeah the teacher might suck at explaining, we did homotheties and a whole lot of exercices on figures, was hell, had to look it up, it was those times i had to stare at might page and try out different things to get it right.
+ cross products, i looked it up, couldn't understand, teacher asked to make one, but i hadn't enough numbers.
Some people just aren't good at math. You don't need a great teacher. Once it clicks, it clicks. A great teacher does help.
because they aren't taught how to teach!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am a math teacher, I've worked with dozens of other math teachers, and I have never met one who doesn't get why kids don't like math or why kids struggle. That kind of mentality is what build up the hatred of math, kids go into class thinking the teacher won't get them or they won't get the math, so they give up before even starting.
I was _completely_ traumatized in school and math got ruined for me very early on. I've always had severe adhd but just recently got a diagnosis at age 23 and I was severely berated by teachers for my entire time in school. From an early age I had an extreme fear of math. Now I must pass math in Uni. I've already failed the exam a few times and the lectures were awful for me. I've finally got myself to actually studying (because if I don't pass next semester I'm gonna be expelled), so I'm currently studying completely on my own terms in my own pace and it's so different. Nobody to pressure me, nobody to berate me. This world wasn't made for neurodivergent people and we are being fucked over so often. If I had been in a more positive and tolerant environment as a child I probably would have really enjoyed math. I do enjoy it now.
I'm severe adhd too, but I got lucky. I'm also autistic and 'gifted',so teachers were more than willing to help me.
I also idolised my brother and wanted to be exactly like him. He loves maths.
Well said - I got a 37 and dropped my Functions course in Grade 11, and did it over the summer instead. I understood alot of the components and had a 78 in the end.
I couldn't even memorize my times tables the entire time of K-12. I didn't bother going to college, didn't see how I would succeed. What pisses me off is that they require math even if your degree or career interest doesn't need alot of math skills. It should NOT be that way. I was interested in history or archeology and stuff like that. But you have to take math also, and that was out of the question for me.
my brother in christ, you don't hate math because of adhd. you hate it because for some reason education thought it to be a good idea to attach ego to learning
@@michaelryan5973 i think they mean that their adhd affected their ability to actually do the math (how it did that depends on what they meant and they didn't specify), and the teachers berating them because of their adhd affecting their ability to do math was what actually created the trauma. So, their fear was not a direct consequence of adhd, but it is a result of educators not being forgiving and/or accommodating for slower learners or learners that need to be taught the subject a different way for them to understand
For me it was a series of unpleasant, aggressive teachers. I'd ask "what is this used for?" and they'd answer something dismissive like "it'll become clear later" which ... look, it's algebra. It's used to build spaceships and make video games and program computers and aim lasers and make music come out of speakers. One sentence "this is what makes the lighting work in Quake" would have engaged me enough to love it.
Yeaaah same. We all understand the point of the 4 main operations. Nobody explains the point of algebra. I get the video is about mental mathematics but I doubt most students dislike math bc of that. I started disliking math in the 8th grade when we started learning about imaginary numbers for example, and multiple unknown factors in an operation. For me it wasn't even anxiety after a point, it was more like, what's the point? That's the issue I had with science subjects like chemistry. Studying chemistry could've been so cool if it wasn't just theoretical. It's a shame.
Edit: I wasn't taught math in English I was corrected in the comments that it's called imaginary numbers.
@@glassy_rose fake numbers?
@@bguy510 I think he means imaginary numbers? idk what those are tho, i just know they exist.
@@Houtblokje that's the first thing I assumed too but 8th graders aren't typically learning those.
@@Houtblokje imaginary numbers ie square root of -1 while at first seem like hokus pokus but it is used all the time. physicists for example use imaginary numbers to explain behaviours of fundamental particles. what i have learned to appreciate is that while there are "imaginary" numbers, they are in fact very real in that they have real world applications. Also the general attitude people have to "imaginary" numbers as if its some weird abstraction that breaks peoples brains, i find to be rather curious. we everyday people utilise the very same abstraction with numbers, for example; 0 is an assigned symbol for something that is absent of value, so there is a number that is absent of value? that seems very abstract. also there are negative numbers????? so there are numbers that have less value than 0 (which has no value?) now that is very abstract when you think about it. however i never hear anyone complain about the lack of "realness" of those numbers. there is a great video by veritasium titled "how imaginary numbers were invented". once you learn to disconnect/ let go of the need to have numbers be strictly bounded in reality, the greater the insights you can uncover about nature.
My grandfather worked as a high school principal until he retired and he had one thing to say regarding why some people struggle with math so much - "all math teachers suck". He says that since math comes easily to them they will often do things such as combining multiple steps in one that can make it difficult for the students seeing the problem for the first time to follow along. The teacher finds math easy, they can follow along with the thread of logic it took to reach that answer so why can't the students?
Generally speaking it's not malice, it's lack of understanding of the students' perspective. The students who find math comes easily to them will be able to keep up with the teacher's explanations and the ones who can't start to fall further and further behind. I tutored people in math for many years and I sometimes found myself wanting to make the same mistakes the teachers do but self-awareness kept me from doing it.
Say you have the problem 2 + 2 + 6 - 3. It may seem so obvious to you that 2 + 2 = 4 and 6 - 3 = 3 so you write down on the next line 4 + 3 but some people's minds just don't work that way. Trying to do multiple steps in a single leap is just too much when they're still learning this stuff. Maybe one day they'll be able to follow along but when it's their first time being introduced to these concepts it overloads their brain.
Math is one of those subjects that once you fall behind it can be difficult to catch up. Math builds on itself in a way that other subjects such as English just don't to the same degree. If you have trouble with addition/subtraction then understanding what multiplication/division is will be difficult. If you can't understand the relationship between addition/subtraction or multiplication/division then doing algebra is going to be hard.
If you read Romeo and Juliet in English class and do poorly it doesn't mean that you can't do better when the class starts reading Lord of the Flies. At some point in their math classes kids just can't progress any further if they are missing too many of those foundational concepts. In most of my tutoring the problem wasn't the new material being taught, it was the missing foundational knowledge that would allow the student to understand the new material.
Edit: spelling/grammar mistakes because if you couldn't tell for me English class = hard
this is the best explanation of this i've ever seen! For so many years I didn't understand basic math concepts until I finally got a good teacher in 9th grade who could explain math in a way that I understood. I understand that teachers are ridiculously underpaid for having such a difficult job but I also think that math teachers should try to communicate with their kids more, ESPECIALLY with elementary kids!
@@fredweasley7112 I know! I never struggled with math so I never really understood what he was saying when I was younger. It wasn't until I started tutoring that the pieces all fell into place and I understood what he was getting at. Seeing the results of these teachers' work firsthand with students who didn't find math easy was very eye opening for me.
EXACTLY.
Math was extremely easy for me in elementary school, so I think my brain started to make this association:math=boring, but also easy so you don't need to do anything.
Than, somewhere in the 8th grade, where things actually started to become a little bit complicated for me, I still had the mindet that I didn't have to work much for the subject. So I'd get frustrated when I didn't understand immediately and I wouldn't bother with homeworks.
By the time I finally realized that, I was behind in math, not necessarely because they were basic things I didn't understand at all, it's more that they were basic things that weren't automatic for me and that I forgot how to do it right after re-learning it. So, the times where I didn't get frustrated and just did the(actually small)ammount of work to catch up, I'd get results in the 90% for the next one or two exams; if I didn't, I would often be outright failling.
This went on for the 9th and 10th grade, and by the time I reached the 11th grade, I was so frustrated that I decided to not take either chemistry or physics, despite the fact that I had done both the advanced science and advance math course-and I passed with results in the low 70%.
Now I'm in college, and for the programme I choose, there was actually one course that does feature math, a statistic course. I've done a lot to improve my organisation and discipline this session and my general average is around 85%; and guess what, in my stats course, I got 92%, nearly 20% above the average of the class...Kind of sad.
I agree with most of what you’ve said here, though it’s important to note that only *some* maths teachers are like this. Personally, I’ve only very recently started to like maths, due to a combination of a couple good, understanding maths teachers and a patient maths tutor a while back.
However, the reason i used to hate maths was definitely the fault of the teachers who just didn’t bother to explain why we did things.
I never understood fractions as a kid, until one day, a teacher mentioned how the line meant ‘divided by’, and it all made sense. Until then, other teachers just assumed we knew that a fraction was just a simpler way of writing a decimal.
It sucks so much, because so many people hate maths just because they had terrible maths teachers when they were young.
It's been my experience that a whole lot of adults seem to have utterly forgotten whet it was like to be a child. Parents, teachers, etc. This has *always* baffled me. I'm fifty-seven years old and I *still* remember. Teach children the way you wanted to be taught when you were a kid.
Good general advice, but I'm not sure how easy it is to implement.
One thing I try to remember (and remind others of) is that kids literally just got here - they have no idea what's going on.
Anyone under the age of 18, while they are capable of having complex thoughts + understanding things etc, literally just got here. They don't have the years of life experience that anyone over 18 does, so things that are obvious to older people are completely new + unknown things for younger people.
Like, a baby doesn't know how to move it's head with its neck muscles, a toddler can't ride a bike properly yet, a kid doesn't know how to operate a stove or a kettle, and a teen doesn't know how taxes etc work.
I constantly remind myself that kids are basically just tiny stupid adults - not stupid in the negative, insulting way but stupid in the homer Simpson way. They're doing their best but they don't have all of the information adults do, so they make mistakes etc that don't make sense to adults (bc we know the extra info) because of their limited information
Yes!! I am currently studying to become a maths teacher in high school and this is actually the reason why I want to do it.
@@doctorwholover1012 I fully agree with you, I would just like to add a footnote: even people above the age of 18 often have a lack of life experience and worldly understanding. I would know. I turn 21 in less than a month and not only do I hardly feel different than when I was 16, but I am quickly learning that I know NOTHING about the world except for my experience in school, my friends, and my hobbies. So basically, only the stuff I've actually put time into. And I haven't had a whole lot of time on this earth thus far, so my knowledge and understanding of the world at large is still limited. I realize that I'm lucky to even have this level of self-awareness at my age. Many don't. It's not their fault, it's just how life and growing up is.
Which brings me to another point: I believe that, at least in largely English-speaking Western societies (HUGE generalization), our culture puts too much emphasis on being a fully functional adult by a certain age. Your teen years are just the beginning of your journey in life, you're just barely starting to learn how to learn. But as soon as you reach around 23 or so, you're expected to just be out on your own with not a problem in sight, which is NOT how people work. And I think this mentality bleeds into teaching. You're expected to have just learned everything you were taught in school by the time you graduate. Again, that's just not how people work. Some do, sure. But not all. Not even most. I don't think I will ever understand why we have such a strong push to be self-sufficient as young as possible. If anything, that just stunts people's learning rather than helping, at least in the case of academics. I can buy alcohol in less than a month... but I still struggle to solve math problems with more than one 2-digit number. Everyone learns in different ways and at different rates, and expecting everyone to learn the same way at the same time will (and has!) only result in disaster for entire generations of people.
it's the "I suffered so others should suffer too" conservative mentality
I literally was always really good at memorizing words…but numbers didn’t seem to have meaning so I was always bad at remembering anything related to numbers
Convert numbers into words
wow numbers have meaning your noob
Learn the first few numbers the same way you learn the alphabet. Then just arrange those numbers together to make bigger ones
Or you could date all the numbers so you wont forget them.
Might not actually be what’s going on here for you, but there is this thing called Dyscalculia, I have it, it’s like the dyslexia of maths, it can effect people who have it differently, like I am extremely good at math, but only if I have a calculator, without it, i can’t even do primary school basic maths… it can effect things like reading sheet music, reading the time in digital and so on
I hated it because I couldn't BS my way to a B- without having read the material like I could in English class
Unfortunately relatable
Yeah. Like a lot of the time in some things to could just go through the...
*_9 Steps to a B in English_*
- Read title
- Read questions
- Construct idea of what the text probably is
- Try to read the text
- Get bored
- Zone out for 2 minutes
- Read a question
- Skim the text for a good enough answer
- Repeat 7 & 8
And you can't memorize everything at the last minute like history.
English is the only actually interesting class to participate in what are you doing
@@pokkiheart Subjective
I mean my thing is “don’t be afraid to be wrong” isn’t exactly an option when your grade depends on you being right. I would like chemistry if it had way less math. I will try to work on my anxiety tho maybe it’ll help my grades
You should focus more on Inorganic and organic chemistry if you're not willing to work in your maths.
@@alokbaluni8760 well yeah but I order to get my degree I need the chem I’m taking now and anyway I have to take chem 111 and 112 to take inorganic
@@rosegeyer7403I understand. I am a computer science major and I only liked physical chemistry because of maths. Glad don't have to study it anymore lol
@@alokbaluni8760 that’s funny I only like it because of the terms and random information 😂
Not sure if this will help, but for chemistry follow your units. Ignore the numbers and try to find a path to get your starting unit(s) into your final unit (of the answer). It won't always work but it might help you visualize how to reach a solution. Another thing is that if you don't know what to do, the first step is to find moles of whatever element/molecule they give you. Sometimes knowing the first step helps you see what step 2 could be. One last thing, when doing conversions, don't do the long line of numbers where you cross out the units. Better to start a new line after every conversion that way if you make a mistake you might not have to start at the beginning. It's a little slower but less chance to make a mistake.
THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I’VE BEEN TRYING TO TELL PEOPLE!!! In the 4th grade my brain would just go blank whenever I did math, then I’d get so stressed I’d start crying- I’d even try to explain to people:
“I’m sorry I don’t understand what you’re saying my mind just shut off”
but no one understood what I meant. Thank you so much for this video and I may or may not be crying right now.
I feel you my man, We feel you. Same shit happened to me.
This is why I tried to go the English route in college. Unfortunately math was still required:(
so many people i know including me had this problem i'm just a little upset since people just couldnt get it sooner
Frfr this always happens to me 🤦🏾
I feel you. I cried over geometry.
I actually loved math until the teachers would tell you that you need to follow and write down this specific long complicated route to get to the answer when you already have a simple one in mind.
phoot math for life
This is accurate to me. I would have one way that I used to find the correct answer, and then the teacher marks me wrong because it's not the formula taught in class. And then ironically, the school invites a math expert who basically gave a talk that can be summed up as "There is more than one way to solve a math problem". Strange that the same school that ridiculed me for a different formula brought an expert in that vindicated my process 😂😂😂
I remember I got help from someone else, who explained it easily
The teacher then did it a completely more complicated annoying way
I don't like that teacher
I was like you, but as calculations became longer I was glad I had the habit to write down every step, makes it easier to think and find mistakes
but you shouldn't have to write every little algebraic step in solving an equation that's just dumb
At higher levels the total number of steps required to solve a problem increases to the point you definitely need to be writing down the process.
The actual reason you need to write down all the steps in school is to let the grader into your head and verify that you are taking one of the valid paths to the answer and not applying a trick to a problem where it doesn't work.
what I hate about math tests is that by the time I find out about tiny errors in my solutions, it's already too late. instead of locating them myself and correcting them before turning my work in, I just turn them in immediately because I don't have enough time to check. and even if I _did_ have enough time, I still could repeat my thought proccess step by step and walk into the exact same pitfalls I did before.
How do you do preparation for the test? Some days before the test or study regularly? I usually see kids who study only before a test ran into this problem. If you study regularly then you need good concentration.
@@alokbaluni8760 the only real preparation is studying the formulas, if there are any. we have math every day in school so it’s not like I’m not getting enough practice
Yes, this is so frustrating. The courses I'm taking now have timed tests, often it's just barely enough time to input the information so you have to do it right immediately. It adds an extra layer of pressure.
What kind of tests do you take? Is it the kind where the teacher themselves personally checked or even made themselves? As I used to have tests that the teachers themselves haven't even bothered to check if they've taught their students that which frustrated me to no end.
Now, I have better teachers and actually calculated the time we would finished and check answers we have. The ones who are late to finish are usually the ones who studied but haven't really had enough practice to the questions the teachers taught us and our teacher actually give us practice question that we could practice on our own.
@@ОлегСуременко I used to think hat and then understood that i gotta practice maths regularly at home to get gud
I always asked that, and strangely enough 90% of my math teachers were somewhat mean, intentionally or not. And I have a degree in computer science, I love math, but (in my experience) it was though by people that seemed angry to be teaching.
Or just impatient! Which had the unintended (I'm sure) consequence of making me feel stupid and like I'd never catch up
Seriously? My math teachers are actually super lighthearted and funny. My friends hate math but loved the teachers LoL
@@idontknowwhatiamdoing.8329 Same thing here, math teachers have been the nicest I’ve had, unlike my Spanish (main language we speak here) teachers
I studied math (currently doing my ph.d.) and I finally found out the answer to why so many math teachers are mean. It's because they suck at it themselves!
The very same questions school kids tend to ask, like: What is that even good for? Will I ever need that in later life? Why do I have to remember the method when I could just guess instead? - they all come up in math class in University, from the soon to be teachers.
I've teached several courses by now and the worst students are always those that want to become teachers. Many of them took math as a second subject, apparently because exams are easy to check and thus it's less time consuming than other subjects. And so there is no real motivation to really wrap one's head around it. They just want to get done with it and be done with it.
I feel like I knew three math teachers that weren't intimidating, and only one of those people were actually good at teaching. I used to tutor, and I really felt that I was helping people with their math anxiety. It's an exercise of empathy for sure!
So I thought I could weigh in on this a bit. I'm a pure mathematician, and one common trait among mathematicians is that they're very good at looking forward to delayed gratification and very curious. Maths is hard, even for professionals, not least because you can not take inspiration from nature*, and more importantl, because your foundation can never be weak. Many kids do a brain dump after exams, and without proper foundations, doing mathematics is like trying to play a piano concerto without having ever practiced a scale.
Many kids are also never allowed to be wrong (incidentally, because we don't encourage little girls to take risks, many more young girls are turned away by maths from a much younger age than young boys). Adults tell them that being wrong means they're deffective somehow. Our school systems don't help either. But professional mathematicians are wrong all the time, not once they have published their papers, but errors in drafts are very common. You learn through your mistakes, and collaborators are very good for this, because they can spot your mistakes much easier than you can.
One way I've thought about it is that instead of having a "learning curve," math is more like a giant bouldering wall. Some people are "natural born climbers" and quickly learn to enjoy the whole process of climbing, including when they fall or get stuck. Others who had consistently poor experiences with it at an early age may develop mental blocks or convince themselves they're "just not good at it," and that leaves them terrified of going more than a foot or two off the ground. We need to totally rethink math teaching so that nobody feels like they can't conquer the wall!
@@nzuckman It is a learning curve, though. But the way in which one learns maths is very different from how one would learn say, biology or chemistry and has to do with the tower-like nature of maths. Knowing facts in maths is only about a third of the story. You also need to be able to derive the facts yourself, as well as connect the dots to form a larger unifying pictures. You can't cram for maths either. You might pass tests that way, but you won't ever understand it that way. Maths requires constant practice and mental investments. In order to understand something, you need to think and then rethink about it, sometikes even for months on end. There are geniuses, and talent helps, but only up to a very small extent. The wall as you described it is not real. What are real are the willingness to commit and preservere. One learns maths with the same mentality that one would have for learning a musical instrument or a language.
@@anonymoose3423 Oh, so it's like learning how to read sheet music then. I'm told that I have "some" talent in the arts (lol no) but I always tell people that whatever skills I have in music, writing or drawing, I got from taking the time to learn and practice those skills.
I remember being told I was wrong before I'd even proposed an answer as a kid - I said show me where, and turned out I was right. Was trying the algebra in the book left on the back of the toilet when I was in 1st or 2nd grade, which I'd actually already learned through TLC computer games. (My autistic ass had played through each "grade" level in the set many times.) The cycle continued till I ended up correcting mistakes in the Trig final key in junior year. Laid the foundation for my loud mouth today🤣
I always wanted to get into computer science, but can't afford college, and not willing to go into debt or sign sketchy business contracts. (Still self-teaching as best as I can.)
@@eo7097 exactly like knowing how to read music. You don't know maths like how you would know which gene controls the segmentation of an embryo, but you know the skills involved in doing maths.
the worst part about math anxiety for me is that I don't actually have it. I have dyscalculia, but my teachers were convinced that the only reason I couldn't do the sheets of 100 problems under time pressure was anxiety, and that assertion has followed me around and become a source of anger and mockery ever since. it has been completely impossible to explain to people that it's not scary, I'm not afraid of the math, I even recognize and appreciate its important, I simply cannot process it beyond the most basic of basics without giving it my full focus and a very long time... but even then, some advanced math will never be within my mental grasp, it all becomes static. man am I glad we're all walking around with calculators in our pockets every day after all
How do you pronounced that word
@@blacklyfe5543 I've also had trouble pronouncing Dyscalculia in the past but it can be split into Diss-cal-cue-lee-ah
So dylexia but for maths?
@@ShaiLai more or less
It's a real thing and I have also heard it called numeric dyslexia or alphanumeric dyslexia in my case.
Currently 65 years old and it doesn't go away or get better. No amount of tutoring or practice helps.
I oftentimes find people saying that they enjoy math only when they understand what they're doing, as soon as they're lost they hate it, same with me. I'll have to force myself to practice hard until I understand something, and when I do understand I really enjoy it. It also depends on the teacher, my college calculus professor made things seem much more complicated than they needed to be, I practically learned everything on my own time by using youtube as a main resource.
I understand some parts of math, but still don't enjoy it. Math just inherently sucks.
There are lots of things that are hard to grasp in Maths but if you have a bit of interest in physics, chemistry or computer science then it feels good that the thing that you study in Maths are applied in these field.
Topics like complex numbers become interesting if you know their application in other fields.
Being confused and figuring stuff out the fun part.
@@tesset8828 except you have a limited time to figure it out and if you make a few mistakes you fail the assignment
AP Calculus was the first and only class I failed. I feel like I didn’t begin to “get it” until March. I just didn’t take the AP test.
Growing up I remember being told that we were either a math or writing kid. I wonder how much that had to do with skill development
"Writing" as in storytelling? I call nonsense.
There are quite some mathematicians out there who went on to become popular authors, especially in the comedic sector.
YESS TO THIS!!! I do maths and English literature a levels (exams at the age of 18) because both are so so interconnected and whoever I talk to hat does on or the other doesn't get it. I wish school wasn't structured that way.
@@lonestarr1490 that's why it's something they shouldn't be telling kids. I struggled with math for a long time, but now I use it everyday at work, so it's become easier.
A lot of the time I find that people prefer one over the other. I certainly do, writing is impossible for me, but my math-hating friends can churn out an essay in under 2 hours.
I was told you were either good in math and sciences or languages. No. Unless you have severe learning difficulties, you can learn both. I am good at essay writing and storytelling even though I was a diagnosed disgraphic. I am writing a novel.
Omg math anxiety makes so much sense. I got made fun of in 6th grade for how bad I was at math when I got put in an advanced math class because I did good on a standardized test and had "good potential"
The same thing literally happened to me.
And I was put in special math even tho I excel at math when given proper instructions...
Same I ended up taking “precalculus” twice because they put me in too early (from good test scores) and I failed it.
Ended up taking precal a total of 3 times in my academic career and don’t even use it xD
I hate math but got put in a pre-calc/trigonometry and my teacher was convinced that I was dyslexic
My mother gave me a Mental Maths book in 2nd grade, and because it was so high level, I practically hated it
im good at math but i get anxious sometimes. the thought that theres only one correct answer and infinitely many wrong answers haunts me to this day
Good news, there are so many correct answers to a question in integration😊
and funnily enough for me that's the thing i love about math. I like having the certainty that there is a right answer and that i can prove it myself, whereas english/history has so much that's left to interpretation and nothing has a clear straightforward answer. I just had to turn in a paper and hope it was up to standards
@misslovedog8177 yeah I was exactly going to say this
just like they said, I can say that there are so many other possible correct answers in other subjects, of which there HAS to be something better than mine
That's the perfect way to word why I disliked math but always loved English.
That and the numbers always change half way through my problem solving, even on paper. Which by the way, did you all know, you can do the process wrong and still manage to get the right answers. My teachers were always baffled by this.
Simply put, I hate math because I’m not given nearly enough time to learn it or understand it
LITERALLY
Yeah Whenever i start to Understand Something the subject changes
I don't want to learn it but everyone force me to learn it or make fun of me
THIS
it always felt like I was barely able to keep up and everyone else was racing ahead with not a thought or care about who was left behind, and wouldn't be able to explain the lessons to me either
I was diagnosed with dyscalculia at an age of 25, which was extremely freeing because I now know why my brain skips big numbers on a page or why I was always stuck doing my maths homework late into the night as a kid. Bad teachers did not help either of course. I thought I would never get a degree in science because of my math aversion, but with some hard work I am now doing a masters degree in biology
heck that's great, I have dyscalculia too but I went the opposite direction where I refused to get anywhere close to math of any kind growing up and avoided it any chance I could. I'm about to get my associate's in visual arts because I spent a lot of time I should have been doing math doodling instead and I've gotten pretty good even though I don't know what I'm doing next. I feel like since I kinda put all my focus on this one thing and every other job in our society requires at least some base knowledge of how math works I don't really have anything to fall back on if I mess up or if being an artist doesn't work out.
@@wiiink That is actually what I did before deciding to take a bachelors in biology. After finishing my Illustration degree I realized I didn't want it as a job and so I went back to school to get the grades in maths I was missing to get into university. It was difficult, and I didn't even know I had dyscalculia at the time. I do hope you will be able to make it in art though!
In my country they don't even know if theres such a thing called dyscalculia. They just assume you're dumb and you're done for. And there are no solid alternative ways for a student to pursue a career which he or she passionate about. It is so sad.
Dang, you're kind of awesome! It's great to know that people can still thrive in science even when diagnosed with dyscalculia. I wish you the best of luck!
How did you get diagnosed at 25? I want to get a diagnosis too. It would make my life so much easier.
My problem with math is that it was extremely repetitive, and never felt "real" to me. We were always learning seemingly abstract things, and then we would have to do it 50 times with only different numbers. Couldn't stand it.
And the "real world examples" where still highly unrealistic. I'm not just talking about the 50 watermelon type questions either.
Ah i love math BECAUSE of how abstract it is lol. In fact, I actually was never super interested in math even though I was good at it, until I hit calculus. Before, everything was so mindless, like your job was literally just to be a calculator. In calculus there was an element of creativity and “what if” where you could experiment with your math, even though it was mostly stuff that’s hard to visualize with no real world equivalent. It was like discovering a whole new, abstract, world. Part of it was just that I had an insanely amazing teacher and it was my first AP math, and AP classes in general tend to teach critical thought while normal classes just force you to memorize. My first AP calc class is the only reason I’m a STEM major today.
@@lizzzylavender relatable, growing up I enjoyed the questions and exercises that felt like puzzles I had to figure out but loathed the algorithmic and trivial calculations. Learning maths as a set of rules and shortcuts is much better than looking at it as a bunch of drills to repeat endlessly, I could feel my dedication decline by the minute I had to crunch several lines of operations
My main problem was that I was always a really inquisitive little shit so the first thing on my mind when I heard of a new math concept would be "but why?". Little did I know that to get to that point you'd have to get extremely advanced in math and learn about proofs in college which... I still do not know how to do. Really wish it was just made to be interwoven with some other science and philosophy or something to make it feel tangible as something that we use to structure how we see the movements in nature. I was just always told to stop thinking about it... so I did. And then stopped caring about math altogether
@@Nell-r0se Yeah, I’m really glad that my gifted teacher in elementary school was so good. My parents tell me about how she seemed so excited to figure out how my brain worked and how best to teach me, and a lot of it was that. She had to explain to me WHY for just about everything. If she just gave me a formula I would mentally clock out, especially since I don’t have a very good memory, but if she took the time to explain to me what is arithmetically happening and why we’d use it in that scenarios, I’d get it just like that.
I definitely relate to this. I did fine in math classes (yay calculators) but have always struggled with mental math. For several years, pre-pandemic, I volunteered at my local library book sale once a month, as a cashier, and we didn't have a real cash register, like that would do the math of giving people change for me, so I had to figure it out myself. If people gave me exact change, no problem, but if they needed change back, I literally had to use a calculator a good portion of the time, because I was so untrusting of my ability to do subtraction in my head. And sometimes people would give me additional money "to help" with the change back. Like I think if it the cost was $2.35, some people would give me $5.35 so that I just had to give them $3 back, but I'd already been planning to give them $5 minus $2.35 and then I would panic and forget how math works and try to figure out $5 - $2.35 + .35, and would think "This isn't helping, you're just making me do math twice!!" Anyway. I should probably do some practice math questions lol.
Ive always struggled With mental math because figuring out strategies for it didnt come naturally to me and reading this hurts
Mental math has always been very free for me tbh, math in general really, genetics probably
Man, me too. I just can't hold onto numbers in my head. Any numbers, not even math related. Memorizing important phone numbers or ID numbers is a MASSIVE pain unless there's a pattern in it. I can look at a number, repeat it several times in my head, look away, and forget it within seconds. So trying to imagine those numbers in my head long enough to calculate an answer is near impossible without extreme concentration and way more time than it would've taken to write it out or use a calculator. I have to write down EVERYTHING. Every single tiny step, or else I lose track of everything. Even with simple addition or subtraction
I also get numbers mixed up in my head a lot and write them down in the wrong order (like 12 instead of 21). I ALSO get my lefts and rights confused all the time and wonder if that's connected
@@slitheen3 That's a HUGE sign of dyslexia. Just saying, friend. If the problem is severe, then you should get checked. Really.
Edit: It can also just be general confusion and panic. But, those are signs of dyslexia.
@@124myth I guess it's possible, but I'm very good at reading and writing, and have been my whole life. I'd choose to read books instead of play with other kids on the playground and wrote stories for fun ever since I could hold a pencil or type on a computer. Isn't problems with reading the main characteristic of dyslexia?
I looked it up, and I do struggle with other things listed as symptoms like telling left VS right, spatial awareness problems, poor fine motor skills and poor handwriting... but words come extremely natural to me and I've never struggled to read things. It's JUST numbers, not letters. But you're probably right, I should get it checked out either way
The headmaster at our school had a habit of hiring young teachers fresh out of the leading universities like Oxford and Cambridge even though they didn’t have any formal teaching training because it was cheap. Of course, they were incredibly brainy and talented mathematicians but THEY COULD NOT TEACH FOR SHIT. They just whizzed through examples, concepts without ever breaking them down or explaining the fundamentals behind them. This was not a problem for the kids who were naturally good at maths, but the kids who didn’t immediately “get it” and/or had gaps in their basic maths knowledge/understanding were completely left behind.
The way my math teacher has been working for at least 35 years but still teaches like this 💀 sometimes it's really not about the experience, some people just shouldn't be teachers or shouldn't teach some subjects in schools where they're not a priority
Hah, I know of a school very much like that - except that I know for sure that at least two of their current Oxbridge maths & physics teachers - one of whom was a young teacher fresh out of uni - know deep within them that imparting insight and understanding, and helping when difficulties arise, is among the most important things when teaching, which is why they went into those jobs in the first place. Which is a nice change from the alternative :) (neither of those two is me, btw)
But I'm sure there are, unfortunately, plenty of the other kind in various places, too
People who have never struggled with math are terrible teachers!
The other problem is if you have a degree in maths and you want to do a maths related job, pretty much the only options are accountant, mathematician, and math teacher/tutor. so people who want to do maths are kinda forced to teach and mostly arent the best at it.
@@kettle7425 why would you list "accountant"? Because it has numbers?
Studying math at the university level you'll deal with very few numbers besides 1 and 0.
True that there are not many options for applying the knowledge directly, but there are many options where a mathematician's mindset is very useful.
"People hate math"
And this is why I'm trying to be a teacher who's actually good at their job
I hope ur dream is gonna come true!!!
@@reqction5826 Thank you! And I hope your dreams come true as well!!
aww thank i dude :)
@@mxstrikk thanks
I hope you get there. All my math teachers were verbally abusive and strict, which made me scared of the subject. So we're counting on you! :)
"Don't be afraid of being wrong!"
"Also, if you're wrong you'll fail this class and never make your major and be a disappointment for the rest of your life!"
School will say that failure is good because you learn from your mistakes but then they’re gonna be attacking your entire future when you get the wrong answer for a question.
I first started being bad at math in 4th grade under similar circumstances. We’d be told to do a lot of problems from our math book and we had 50 minutes or else it’d be homework. I NEVER finished within that 50 minutes and I was the only one (that I saw). It was embarrassing especially since I was seen as the “smart” kid until then. It eventually just turned into me writing down all the problems so I wouldn’t be seen taking that giant math book home with me. Ever since then it’s been an embarrassing subject for me.
Yikes I've had nightmares with less anxiety-inducing stuff then that, sorry that happened to you
Which country? I'm Maldivian, and we always carry all the textbooks in the bag.
My math teacher would always pay attention to just two guys who were really good at math and she would call the rest of us slow learners and sometimes, she wouldn’t pay attention to us the whole lesson, because we were too slow to understand the subject in her eyes. I found a tutor later on who REALLY loved math. He would talk about math and physics with so much enthusiasm yet I still understood what he was talking about. Four years later, he is working on his PhD from physics and I have the honor to listen to him everyday and I hope I will have this honor for the rest of my life
@Scarlet Baxter u married ur tutor?
@@good-tn9sr what where did they say that?
@@good-tn9sr I think it's implied that their tutor became an instructor or teaching assistant at their college/university
I learned without any teacher until 5th grade things are easy after that you can learn it yourself if you have good book.
@@IndigoTeddy When you listen to someone every day (and that is EVERY DAY) that means you live with them. Doing that for the rest of your life means you're married to them. Not to mention, keeping in touch with a tutor for four years absolutely means they became more than tutor and tutee, because once your classes are done, do you still ask the tutor for help???
HS math teacher here, and firstly, *THANK YOU* for focusing on and diving into math anxiety, its causes, and how to deal with it. Every semester I get new students who say "I suck at math," because they come from an experience just like the one you described: classes focusing on speed and accuracy, instead of focusing on the underlying concepts. I regularly f*ck up equations on the board, and say "Welp, it happens" and correct my work - because it's the best way to show that mistakes are common and okay.
Also, thanks for introducing me to onlinekyne - 100% not my style of creator, but definitely someone my students will dig on, and I'll show her stuff in class. Hopefully the game will be popular too, but that might take some bribery...
As a high school student--- We feel so much more comfortable watching math teachers make the same little mistakes we do.
"I'd rather make fun of myself than make a fool out of myself"
That actually sums up a lot of 'anxieties' regarding learning pretty much anything. E.g. there are certain video games (weird example ik) that I actively choose to not practice at, because I know I'm bad right now, and would rather stay that way jokingly, than try to slowly improve, for fear of judgement upon failing even when actually putting the effort in.
All of that said, it doesn't solve the problem. Guess I gotta stop caring what people think...
I just joke about my failures, if they don't know you were trying and you're the first to make a joke about it then you're just being a goofy goober.
dont worry man, nobody thinks about you.
@@society1876 What matters is not about what people think about you, but what *you* think people think about you.
This is really a good point. Being afraid of making mistakes is very destructive and makes the learning process a lot longer, not only in math but in everything
yeah also for me in tests or by myself im really good at math (def best in our 100 people grade) but when my friend asks me a fast question to answer fast I just give up
One thing worth adding is that this trauma probably stems from the proliferation of timed tests in primary school, where you only have like 3 minutes to answer like 50 basic single-digit math questions, which are shown to increase stress when taken.
Hehehe "stems"
Are you sure the source of stress is the tests themselves and not the punishments? My primary school did "Math Minute" every week (1 minute, 50 questions), but no one was traumatized by it, probably because the teachers treated it like a fun little non-physical exercise whose sole purpose was to get our adrenaline pumping, early into the day. No punishments, no comparing students with each other, no humiliation for failing.
@@akdn7660 I feel like it’s not the punishments but the atmosphere and reason. Even if you’re not punished if you fail, if you feel like you need to do it well, perfect, etc. it could still be a stress inducing.
When I said reason I meant whether the test is graded, a game, or just drills. If it is graded, it’s usually more stressful, drills are still stressful but not as much as graded test. Games however are more carefree.
However, sometimes, regardless of reason, people are stress when they get answers wrong or such because they are worried about the reactions of teachers or parents (especially teachers because most of the time, teachers are the ones who checks your papers).
I did those in 3rd grade what wegot didn't matter I don't think but it was rly helpfull
It's no wonder countries with big tests like South Korea has such a high suicide rate
Math is the most tangible measurement of failure.
And I dont want people to keep telling me I failed or how much I've failed when I'm in the process of learning.
Unlike arts and other creative subjects.
I personally like art, painting, design because people cannot tell me I failed because they metrics are subjective to personal perception. It all depends on IF I MYSELF like what I made or not. And thats the best way to overcome competition, you can improve yourself. I life that.
Interestingly enough, I prefer to know that I failed and where my mistake is. It helps me improve faster and that improvement is more tangible to me than getting a B on a paper or art piece one day and a C the next due to subjective opinions. Then again, I'm a Computer Science major so that's how my brain works, I suppose.
Maths is incredibly subjective if it’s not stupid.
I'm in animation and art also has it's own that are not subjective to personal perception so I don't see much difference to be honest. Learning anatomy, breaking down measurements of design, straights against curves, colour theory, timing etc. But unlike math they can't always tell you exactly what's wrong and why you failed. I'm not sure if this is good or bad just it is what it is.
In my experience school subjects that are supposed to have subjective metrics actually don't. For instance there is only one right way to interpret whatever literature piece is given to you. They always tell you you get points if you can argue and support what you see in the text, but you don't. The teacher wants you to see one specific thing and if you write about something else you get a bad grade. This is why I never liked doing character analyses or the like when I was in school
i like hearing where i fail weather it is subjective or objective. I at least am just not a fan of... science. I do not get the talent for art and i am more oriented in philosophy, history and literature. It is just a lot more interesting to me and balance between knowing facts and creating and thinking on your own as I think exactly these are the subjects that usually motivate more critical thinking and doubts...
maths make brain go pain big mood
I like to think I'm alright at math, but wow when it doesn't immediately make sense... oh boy, it's big pain time.
Omg it’s my favorite RUclipsr! 💙
my weaponised incompetence is making my brother do maths for me
@@HeyRowanEllis work smarter, not... smarter.
maths make brain go goo
Tbh I've always felt that a contributor to people giving up on math is not only the emphasis on "do arithmetic quickly" torture that elementary schools put you through, but the fact that so many popular characters in the popular media people consume as children all hate math. Hollywood paints math as this thing that you're supposed to hate, and I think that damages the relationship of young people with the subject. People who may otherwise fall in love with the beauty of higher level math leave it behind because they were told they should hate it. And we'll, they weren't always getting instant 100s on those timed arithmetic quizzes, so they must not be good enough to try anyway
I fucking love the names she gives the chapters, like “my villain origin story” when she talks about doing as many questions as possible to win stickers as a child.
When I was in grade school we’d literally have to do these competitions where the teacher would point out random students and make them compete for who could answer multiplication questions the fastest in front of the whole class. It was harrowing and I remember the people who were good at multiplication would use this as a way to brag and make others feel bad. Anyways the seconds before the teacher would point someone out were terrifying. It made me feel like such a failure.
I literally don't even understand how the teachers come up with these cruel humiliating methods and what they think they'll accomplish by using them. It sound like something that would make me skip class on the regular, instead of motivate me to study.
This comment unearthed some traumatic memories for me. I would genuinely cry myself to sleep the night before school knowing that these ‘games’ were coming up the next day. My brain would sort of freeze up and I would just be stuck there with all those eyes on me, waiting for a response. It was so traumatic for me and to this day I still freeze up when asked to do any sort of mental maths on the spot. It’s something I’m incredibly embarrassed about and I dread being caught off guard with it in everyday life. I’ve always just told myself I’m not mathematically inclined but the way I was taught maths at school DEFINITELY wasn’t helping, lol.
As a Canadian math teacher this episode hurts my heart. I'm so sorry your grade 1 teacher did that to you, that is terrible math teaching. I work so hard every school year to try to undo harmful math practices students have experienced in elementary and middle school. I think this is a great topic for your video. So many people don't think about how math could be different especially after they leave school.
To extend your thinking further, I would suggest that "faster" math should not be the goal, flexible math is much better. Thinking of numbers flexibly means using the numbers given to you interesting ways to make it easier for you. In your example of 12x17 there are many strategies that could work for students, all equally valid. You could add 12's together, think 10x17 and then 2x17, half and double to make the question 6x34, and a bunch of other strategies. My grade 8 students could come up with a ton of ways to solve that one problem and they are all equally valid and shows us something about the truths of math. So it's more about exploring and discovering math as opposed to getting the answer faster.
I have a ton of other thoughts on educational reform in math and a bunch of great sources and resources if you ever wanted to explore this topic more.
Keep up the great work on the channel.
Memorizing stuff is hard for me and it was very hard for me to remember multiplication tables, so I don't actually use them. I look for patterns in the question and use them to get an answer.
I calculate 12x17 by breaking it up into 12x12 and 5x12. I happen to know that 12x12 = 144 and 5 feet is 60 inches. Add them together: ignore the least significant 4; 6+4 =10, carry to over the 1, 1+1=2, reassemble the number to 2-0-4. Double check to make sure I didn't get the carry wrong.
Math became so much easier when I got into algebra and didn't have to remember arithmetic.
Thank you for the hard work! My family piled their expectations on me by giving me a Mental Maths Book and then punishing me when I couldn't instinctively do it like in English (I used to watch English cartoons growing up, it is my second language) so it really put me off
Any recommendations for math books/resources to get more into it? I want to understand math better cuz I like science but I've been shattered in regards to feeling like I'm capable of doing the math
This makes me think of a few weeks ago when I was very tired and trying to figure out how long a shift was (let's say it was 7 to 4.)
So I thought: were on a 12 hour clock, so I need to get all the hours to one side of the clock. The three hours on the second "clock" need to move to the first one. 7-4 is 3, so it's the same as three to noon, and 12-3=9, so it's a nine hour shift. My mom and sister thought that was a very odd way to get to the answer. 🤣
@@vaishnavisingh9244 Yeah my family were also very aggressive about math growing up. Luckily later in life I learned that math isn't just memorizing or finding an answer, but I still have arithmetic anxiety.
I tutored my best friend in math through college (that was how we met and became best friends). Here are a few touches added into the subjects to make it simple for him:
- Think of math as a language: at the core, all math expressions are technically short-hand writings. Just like learning a language, the new symbols, new operations are like a new word. As long as one understands the meaning of it, and reads/understands math expressions properly. It already helps tremendously in removing math anxiety.
- learning math is like building a pyramid, new knowledge is built upon the previous ones. Therefore, when someone says "they are bad at calculus", it is not necessary true. The teacher/tutor needs to find where the hole of the student's knowledge and 'plug' the gap. For example, when I tutored my friend on calculus, he keeps get the wrong answer. It turned out that he kept screwing the basic order of operations. I spent weeks to help him on it, and he got better at Calculus.
- Lastly, this piece is applicable to algebra. This is where most of my America teachers screwed up. "Never plug in or do any calculations until the expression is solved algebraically." This is the correct way to do math and it helps the students to understand things abstractly, and easy to find errors if any.
This is only true if your brain doesn't flip things into different orders while writing down the numbers and letters or while trying to do mental calculations.
Tutors saw me write problems down incorrectly and would point it out, and it would happen repeatedly. And if I did happen to write a problem correctly, it was not possible to to follow them on how to get the answer. It was a waste of their time and mine.
@@dbs555 I gotcha. I would point back to the 2nd point I made: you just had bad tutors/mentors. 😆 They failed to find out where your knowledge gap was and helped to plug it.
It is really hard to find good tutors who are good at their jobs and also genuinely care about your knowledge foundation. I don't blame them, because most of the time, the students come in to only want to pass the test and move on with their lives, not caring to actually understand the math.
I'm not American, I don't understand.
How are they teaching you algebra?
So basically, you were never taught anything beyond algorithmic solutions for basic arithmetic, moved on to more abstract mathematics, and never had to look back because it's ... arithmetic.
I don't think that's why most people hate math.
I think most people hate "math" because "math" builds on itself. If you are falling behind in Biology, just wait it out and you'll move on to a brand new subject. Might take a unit, might take a year. But you won't necessarily need to have operational knowledge of this year to be able to get through next year. Math? Nope. If you don't have operational knowledge of algebra, you will struggle with trig. If you struggle with trig, you will have some gaps in calculus. Those gaps in calculus will have to be filled before you move to calc 2 or you will have a Bad Time. And if you aren't fluent in calculus and algebra, you might as well not bother taking any higher math classes beyond them.
For this reason, I think Math is better internalized as a "language" course. A humanities thing instead of a STEM thing. Even though it's right there on the tin for STEM.
Yes, I think the main reason is because if you miss something or do not understand every building part of a concept you'll get stuck. If you can solve 20 exercises on your first try, you're most likely gonna love Math. just by the pure dose of ego boost that you get from that, but if you get stuck on the 3rd one, damn it will get frustrating.
To add to what you said, It's not uncommon for lot people to make it college level calculus and barely understand algebra. The calculus principles often aren't that hard to grasp, but when you throw in intense algebra in most of the calculus problems it doesn't matter if you understand the theory. If you fail the computation you're boned. For many, this is the first time the "system" didn't just keep pushing them through and suddenly they're failing an expensive college class.
I'm not sure that I agree about bio, if you don't understand mitosis you'll never get what okizaki fragments are. We don't go nearly as deep on any science subject as we do with math, so I think that we just don't run into those problems as often in other subjects. I certainly had the problem of compounding concepts after missing something in chem, but chem was a one year class so I was able to skate by and move on.
I'm not convinced that is the whole or even main reason people dislike maths, it definitely amplifies the problem but I don't think it's the root cause. Though I definitely agree that teaching maths more like teaching a language could be really beneficial.
But math isn't a language. It's a tool
As someone who LOVED math in school, I hated history classes, because then I had to interpret information that someone could give a great answer to where mine would be subpar. I liked having the right answer and not having to make up my own answer based on facts and theorization, and instead get the single answer through logic
Edit: I've had great math teachers and some dickish history ones
I feel you... literally love maths but hate history :)
@@ray8221-y4r same here :)
The reason you love math is the reason I hate it and love history
omg yes 😩 history and English are my WORST subjects and your comment just enlightened me on why 😆👍
I love history and hate math 😳😳 my polar opposites in this comment thread 😭
Whenever I used to show my mum my maths homework…e.g fractions she’d say “this is nothing like what we used to learn, it used to be so much easier” I wish it still was 😭
Math doesn't change, it's still essentially the same concepts, your mum is just misremembering because it's been a while.
@@paradox9551 lmao no, my parents haven't actually most of the topics I'm studying currently
@@v3n0m71 Again, maths hasn't changed, you're probably just taught more.
@@paradox9551 yeah its what they said
@@paradox9551 but they have changed the way its taught, like common core, which some parents find harder because its unfamiliar
This video made me realise I can pinpoint the exact traumatic event that made me get math anxiety.
When you do calculations in your mind, do you actually visualise the numbers? Asking as a person with Aphantasia 🙃
I've always been drawn to maths, but because of how I was taught maths in school as a child, it really set me up to fail with the way my brain works. I just wish I'd known there were other ways to approach mental maths, without relying on actually seeing the numbers, or relying on visual representations.
Well, I guess I have no excuse to not throw out my Reddit browsing habit, and pick up maths again instead >:)
As someone without aphantasia...not really. At least, not for the easier problems. 6x9 I've memorized. 12x17 took a moment, but even then it was only to help me remember some intermediate values, not for actually doing the calculation. For simple algebra problems, I may visualize cancellations and moving things across the equal sign, though I'm not focused on the exact shape and appearance of the numbers and variables so much as their locations. Anything more complex and I'm getting some paper.
Also, whether you can do it _in your head_ isn't really important. We have calculators for a reason.
I also have some tricks for mental arithmetic:
I've memorized the first 20-odd squares, so I'll rewrite some multiplication problems as a difference of squares. For example, 17x19 = (18-1)(18+1) = 18^2 - 1^2.
The difference of consecutive squares is the sum of the bases, e.g. 25^2 - 24^2 = 25 + 24. Useful for squares that are just outside my memorized list.
Any time I have to multiply or divide by 5, I convert it to 10/2, as dividing/multiplying by 2 and shifting the decimal point is generally easier.
This one's a bit more visual, but when taking the sum or arithmetic mean of several numbers that are relatively close together, I'll take a pair of numbers and move them toward each other simultaneously, like balancing weights on a seesaw.
Sometimes when multiplying I'll take a factor of one number and move it to the other, e.g. (12)(3) = (6*2)(3) = (6)(6). Sometimes it helps, sometimes not.
I do but when the numbers are too bing (so 2 two-digits numbers) everyting gets mixed up and I feel like I am lost in some kind of maze of numbers. Probably because I have the wrong method (right to left instead of left to right)
I've got aphantasia too, and the biggest thing for me is memorization of facts. When I started learning math, my teacher recognized that I didn't use visual tools well (like multiplication boxes werent useful, the traditional method made more sense). This was because I couldn't create the boxes in my head (i never even understood the purpose of the boxes--it just took more time to draw. I only learned many years later that people actually could visualize them). Ive got my timetables memorized to 11 (hours and hours of repetition and tricks along with good number sense), and write out anything I can't get to right away. I used to do flashcards all the time as a kid, along with math video games, because my parents thought it was important to emphasize, and i've never lost the skill (probably because I'm a math major). I'd reckon exposure and practice would help develop more of that sense at any age. Gamification is good so long as it's at the right level--feeling the pressure to win at something you don't feel confident in yet isn't a great thing. Practice some to figure out your baseline, and set realisitic goals, and remember that it's something you're trying to do for fun.
I don't really visualize them. I kinda just think of them. Not visually, more like I auditorilly imagine the numbers.
I feel like I had writing anxiety when I was in school. Teacher would give us 30 min to write a short essay and I would freeze, start sweating, heart rate increasing, until 10 min remained and I would frantically try and jot something down. This wasn’t because I didn’t understand English (I am a neurotypical native English speaker), but was probably due to all of the factors that you described contributing to math anxiety, except for me it was with writing assignments.
Oh yes I hated those timed writing assignments. I would always do so poorly on those as I would spend 15 minutes just trying to think of how to start it. But when I was given time to write long essays, I would always do well. My teachers were so confused as to why I could barely write anything in 20 minutes but did well on research papers.
As a young child, I -along with the rest of the class- had to drag my chair go a different classroom for math. The sound of scraping chairs on the floor still hurt my ears. The class was big and I couldn’t concentrate. At 8 years old I already was behind in math and I had to study each summer during the holiday to learn the tables. When I was in high school my teacher flat out said girls weren’t as good in math as boys. This video made me realize how much I have come to associate math with punishment or other negative factors. It’s a shame that interest in math has been so discouraged. By I am actually decent in statistics in my field of expertise, so I wonder if I can find a new way and love math
Public compulsory schooling wasn't designed for true education. Conformance, obedience, and just enough rote skills to get by, while at the same time sorting out a select few for the managerial class. The punishment was the point.
And the boy/girl thing is only true at the extremes. Given a thousand students over a career. If the ten best math students the teacher ever had, 8 or 9 would be male, but the same thing is true of the 10 worst students. On average there is little difference and most of it evens out with age.
My school had those timed math tests too. But instead of stickers, anyone who finished with all right answers in the one minute either got to eat outside for lunch or got extra recess time. I don't think I finished on time once. This isolated me from friends and showed me that I wasn't smart. I struggled in other areas too. I literally couldn't read until my mom single handedly taught me in 3rd grade (now reading is a favorite hobby).
I have AHDH, dyslexia, and math dyslexia (I have no clue how to spell the technical name), but none of those were caught or even considered until adulthood when I put in the effort to find answers. So I spent my entire early years thinking I was stupid, even though I was actually a smart kid. I completed the first draft of a whole novel at age 14 and played multiple instruments (making the top in my state on one) in high school. I was smart. But they didn't see that.
When I got older, I actually understood algebra better than my peers. Everyone complained about the letters, but for whatever reason it clicked in my brain a lot of the time. I still struggled, but I was one of 5 kids in my entire school to get top scores on the state test. Geometry was hell. I didn't understand at all and barely made it by. Even in algebra, where my math skills shined, I couldn't do anything in my head. I had to write down every single step, even ones that most of my peers could do in their heads. I got comments about how much paper I wasted because kids are cruel.
It's taken years, and I'm still trying to unlearn all of that negative stuff. My teachers told me over and over that I wouldn't have a calculator with me everyday. I understand it was a different time, but they were also super wrong. So who cares if I can't do math mentally. Or when I can it's in some weird way that everyone says is stupid and more complicated than how they were taught? As long as I have the right answer (or close enough to not hurt anyone) then who cares how I got there?
math dyslexia is called dyscalculia
I have diagnosed math anxiety. I had dyslexia and undiagnosed adhd when I was a little kid in the 90’s and my parents didn’t super understand what to do with that so they got frustrated and yelled allot, they were good about helping me with reading but the math but they just didn’t put allot of time into. It didn’t help that my older brother was effortlessly amazing at math, so most of my childhood was “WHY IS THIS SO HARD FOR YOU??? LOOK AT YOUR BROTHER HE’S SO SMART, WHY ARE YOU SO DUMB??” I had special teachers for math, and had math tutors all the way up to high school, shit all the way up through college. I’ve had to retake math 120(algebra) 3 times. Every time I’m in a math classroom I get this intense anxiety, like someone is going to yell at me at any minute. It’s fucking horrible because I love science and computer shit, I love origami and sewing, I love activities that involve math but if you put me in a classroom setting I completely devolve.
*a lot
Think of it like this: a few, a little, a bunch, a _whole_ bunch, a lot, a _whole_ lot.
"Allot" has a different meaning, related to the word "allotment." It means to divide something and assign different pieces to different people or purposes.
@@alvallac2171 are u serious
Have you ever looked into dyscalculia? This is the most I've ever related to a comment and I've got it. I never even passed algebra despite having constant tutors and one who lived down the street that I could ask for help whenever.
I have a very similar experience with my asian family, also ,ade ,e hate family gatherings cause they compare their children n shit there..
@@icycatx nothing wrong with constructive criticism.
Literally didn't know math anxiety was a thing but it makes complete sense. My first bad experience with math happened in 3rd grade when we were learning our timetables. Our teacher was the worst when it came to punishments. The one day I had gotten a bad score on our timed quiz I had to sit down and write around 2 pages of the dictionary as my punishment. Later that year on Halloween he told us he would tell our parents to not let us go trick or treating until we finished our math homework. I ended up sitting at my kitchen table that night crying because my dad had told me I wasn't allowed to go trick or treating since I couldn't do my homework. Not even joking from that point on I would completely shut down whenever anyone would ask me a simple math question. I actually cried one time because I couldn't respond. I do so much better with things like quadratic formulas but goddammit I hate simple math.
i had no bad teachers, but i am horrible at simple math
i would have just not written the dictionary pages. what are they gonna do? tell my mom?
1 half of the time doing math I’m crying, the other half i’m searching it up, and the other half i’m just giving up
I have progressively become more and more of a math nerd from the moment I realised that I actually enjoyed maths. It activates my brain in a way that problem solving similarly does. It’s definitely because I grew up with the same, brilliant maths teacher throughout secondary school- who thanks to drilling in the exam questions early on helped me find GCSE maths actually really fun. Because once you know how to do something and how to apply it, is genuinely becomes a sort of puzzle. My favourite way of putting it is that when youre younger, your teachers will take maths (imagine it’s an infinitely scaled painting) and zoom it down into a mere fraction of the full size. Once our brains can comprehend that tiny square, they’ll expand it a little and by using the context we already have from the painting, we understand why those brush strokes were added next. Trying to explain to someone a maths concept before they understand the basics of how it works is like trying to describe a part of the painting they haven’t seen yet- there’s no way youre going to be able to predict what it looks like if youre nowhere close to seeing it. I understand however that some people have a harder time understanding certain topics, but thats not because they’re not smart nor bad. Perhaps they just dont like that particular painting, and they have an easier time interpreting another piece of art- aka another subject.
Yes I used an art analogy. I dont regret it.
Now that Im starting A level and have been opened up to even more topics (with yet another great teacher) I cant help but get even more excited about what Im learning, because my brain sees that Im using previous knowledge and applying it to topics that otherwise thought looked a lot harder than they were. Its the satisfaction of realising that you have the tools and that you indeed figure out a way to apply them, and once you have it figured out then translating that method into countless other similar problems that gets me so excited. I have become a full blown maths nerd, and I love it.
Maths is basically dopamine❤
This comment is so excellent. It made me realize why I love math. Thanks for sharing!
I'm studying to become a math teacher and I kinda knew that a lot of people struggled with "math-anxiety" but no one ever explained to me what it feels like. thanks for letting me empathise with my future students. love your video's
I only hate math because my future depends on passing the subject while I’m horrifyingly bad at it, plus having to answer in front of a whole class full of people who are actually smart.
Of course I can work with numbers on my own when I understand stuff, sometimes I’ve entertained myself doing math exercises, but I still have haunting memories of struggling to even add and subtract from an early age while everyone got to play out in recess because they did understand and finish their work like any normal person would. I’m incredibly stupid and slow and it always shines when maths and physics or chemistry come into play
Hey! I know it’s been months, but I hope you know that not always getting a good score on tests in school having nothing to do with being smart, it’s just a very specialized skill of knowing what your teacher wants. You’re definitely not dumb, and it’s really frustrating when grades hold so much power. In my experience the only people I would consider “dumb” (or times I would consider myself to be dumb) are when people are too arrogant to see a need for improvement, so learning stagnates. Other than this, everyone has the potential to be really good at stuff.
Be sure to find a really smart friend who you can talk to a lot. If he’s a genuine friend, he won’t judge you and will probably ENJOY helping. I feel like people are most receptive to being taught things like this by their friends (if the friend is a decent teacher). I would argue that this can work even better than an amazingly talented teacher sometimes
Just fucking answer regardless of how wrong you are and ask why. Your not going to get better unless you make mistakes. Thankfully though if you apply yourself and get hundreds on the homework it literally starts to get easier.
The point of every class is to come out of each lesson having learned the entirety of the material taught. So if there is a single thing you do not understand, you HAVE to ask it regardless of how dumb you think it is. I’ve seen so many students get so scared to ask a question because it might make them look stupid when actually there are 15 other people with the same damn question.
Honey you summed up my life ily
Hey, got to ask you this question. What are you majoring in? Sorry it’s a question of curiosity. If you say anything engineering that’s what put it out of my head for a few years. Now I love math and am doing Chem E.
I think you should have mentioned dyscalculia too, it's a math-related learning disability and it sucks... We basically suffer with mental math mostly, but there are other things too. What I mean is many peeps who aren't good at math and are scared by it may be dyscalculic too.
I didn't know there was a word for it, but I totally have that (i also have dyslexia, so i figured it was related to that). I have to write down anything I try to calculate, even if it is just a finger in the air, or I completely forget what the numbers are or what order they are in.
@@stevegruber4724 I have dyscalculia too and, when reading long numbers, they get jumbled if I don't block them out with my hand and disclose each of the individual figures one by one. Dyslexia is very underdiagnosed (at least where I live), and I think dyscalculia is /even more/ underdiagnosed.
I'm so glad to know that I'm not the only one
I have Dyscalculia too, I wish more people knew about it because so many things in our society rely on math and it makes me feel really dumb and useless when everyone else can easily understand things that I just can't. I especially hate that I always have to follow my boyfriend around in video games because otherwise I instantly get lost since I can't read maps.
I have dyscalculia too, but now I'm working as a mathematician.
Luckily dyscalculia doesn't hinder solving problems anymore, now that we have access to a computer in our pocket and all these useful tools like Wolfram Alpha, MatLab, and Python to supplement our computations. Unfortunately schooling is so stuck in our old ways that students are not taught the skills needed to be able to use these tools effectively. You get punished for needing these tools, it sucks.
Another quick mental multiplication tip - split the number into units, tens then hundreds etc and multiply each of them individually. So for example 12x17 would be 12 x 10 plus 12 x 7 = 204 ( two calculations that can be done much more easily that two digit multiplication)
This is great advice! I wish our math teachers actually taught us this instead of making us figure it out ourselves through thousands of math problems.
it's the 12 x 7 part that would get me stuck bc either i split it up even further (10 x 7 and 7 x 2) and start to forget the unit placements (tens for hundreds, for instance) of all the sums from those broken up calculations.
@@dylanpoynor2318 when i was in elementary school, my class year were "guinea pigs" to a newer method of teaching that did exactly that (breaking stuff up, more explanation of the concepts). Found it very helpful, even if it was tedious at times with writing down every single step.
As a math student, I understand why people don’t like math - it’s because of teachers. I LOVE math and enjoy it SO MUCH, but some of my college professors ruined it for me...
So a little bit of a story. I live in Hong Kong, we can choose to take an elective math class that we call Mathematics Module 2 in high school which covers Calculus, Matrix, Vector and more Algebra(As you can imagine, it is notorious for it's difficulty).
But I took it and my first year was miserable. Our teacher is the kind of people who can integrate in Math but can't integrate into society, the class was so boring that I have even considered dropping out of it. But then, the second year around we got a new teacher. He is such a cool guy and I immediately started having interest in Math and worked my way up from the bottom(I had to basically re-learn everything from the first year) and now I am at least half decent at most of them. I might even study it in college(Not sure if this is a good idea but guess we'll see)
Teachers really do have an immense impact on people's academic performance.
So true
Really it was the exact opposite for me
Same, I still love math, but I hate the teachers, they ruined it for me.
math can be easy if taught right or stupidly hard if taught the wrong way
my experience with math anxiety comes with being a gifted kid. I was always in accelerated/special math and teachers always praised me and I liked the praise. I was scared of being wrong and still am because they might be disappointed in me. my parents never praised me for anything at home so that was my only way of making myself feel good. I had a lot of trouble wording that, ouch
i have never related more to a yt comment
Yes, this! For me, it was also other subjects, where as the tip of the iceberg a teacher used to make fun of me when I got something wrong because my answers were usually flawless. Well, so I panicked everytime I was asked an unexpected question because I knew being wrong was not an option...
This and then when you're the "smart" person in class and you get something wrong, people just completely mock you. I had a friend who 99% of the time was stealing my answers and the 1% if the time she wasn't she was rubbing it in my face that I forgot a step. First time I got a 70% on a test another friend got a few points higher and was all "I guess I'm smarter than you!" And it just made everything so much worse. People suck!
this is me
I never have fear of being wrong,but I can relate to feel like being good at math is the only good thing I had, but I were wrong so are you,you are worth more than being the smart kid, sometimes you feel you don't, and doesn't matter if your parents doesn't praise much, probably they are very pride of you,if no who cares,you live for yourself,not for them.
I really like that you mentioned the working left to right method. In school I found "carrying the one" confusing and thought working from big to small made more sense. Even in subtraction (just write the difference with a minus in front) then afterwards add up all the resulting numbers. It takes a bit longer but it made much more sense (my teachers did not like me doing this though :))
i gave up when they told us to carry the one in subtraction
Teachers were always telling me I did the things wrong. I would be getting the correct answers but was somehow still wrong because I did it "the wrong way". It is the first thing I did that was wrong while my answers were correct.
@@lampyrisnoctiluca9904 same, though mine accepted it though. If it was correct and I understood it they were fine with it. Though they’d prefer if I did it their way lol
when doing mental maths, I go left to right, as it is easier to keep track of everything, however on paper, I'd say right to left is better, as it's quicker and takes less space in the page
I literally couldn’t do equations because of the wording “balance the equation” I just literally didn’t get it
As another person with a math degree who gets into weird mental spaces when I try to do arithmetic, this resonates so hard. My experience has been that most people don't actually hate math; they hate their experience in math class. And that's totally valid! But fortunately, it's also considerably more fixable, and it's hard to overemphasize how valuable being able to do basic number crunching in your head without feeling anxiety can be. I use it literally all the time in tabletop games like Warhammer, but I *also* use it when skimming news headlines to realize "yeah that statistic has to be seriously cherry picked because that cannot possibly generalize or else everyone would be dead already".
I love Kyne! Happy to see her here.
And yes, math anxiety still a problem for me and I do retail!
Math teachers were impatient with anyone who couldn't answer immediately and that affected me.
I think a lot of math anxiety can be traced back to our extremely broken american school system. For whatever reason, in my experience, math was given WAY more focus than any other subject. It is frightening to me how many people I went to school with were so good at math that they were legit taking college entry classes, yet couldn't formulate a simple paragraph to save their lives and genuinely had the literary precision of a grade schooler. It's really frustrating to be someone like me, who is far more interested and did better with literature and literary studies and creative writing, but be viewed as a failure because math is extremely difficult for me. Deadass, I've had teachers who view literature focused people as lazy or unintelligent.
My high school was the EXACT opposite. I was always more math-minded. Numbers made sense to me, Beowulf not so much. This made me an automatic failure. I loved to read (still do) but I didn't love to read what our English teachers did (if it was written after 1599, it was garbage to them).
You think you're the only one? Everyone in my class is OBSESSED with doing math homework and almost ONLY that. They treat math like some sort of killer god or sumn
@@ashleychanforevertwenty bucks says your in the advanced program and your classmates base their self worth on it.
@@karanaki_3256
Not really bc there's no advanced class, only the default and a few for failing students
You need to develop your logical functions. Research MBTI. It sounds like you have a high amount of extroverted intuition (which is good with ideas), and low amounts of introverted thinking or extraverted thinking. I think you are an ENFP.
So basic, mental math is all I can do. In highschool, my algebra teacher would bring us in front of the whole class, show us a solution, and make us hit a "that was easy" button. Then we would repeat the problems on Fridays and if we got it wrong, we hit a "doh" button.
Looking back on it, he was just trying to make it fun. But I remember the 6th or 7th week of the year, I still hasn't gotten a single problem right, and the pressure to get it done quickly and while people were watching was what stopped me. I would freeze up because I was ashamed of how long it took me.
And that's why i have math anxiety on complex problems. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.
I can confidently say that math does elude me. Even at a young age I was super bad at it. My mother would scold me for not trying hard enough or not focusing (foreshadowing). Just sit down and do it. I ended up having to take summer school nearly every year of middle school and high school just to keep up. Even to this day sometimes basic math causes me to go catatonic looking at the page.
Oh and the foreshadowing part, I'm in my 30's now, and at the urging of my therapist, I got tested for ADHD and turns out yeah. I've been struggling with ADHD apparently my whole life.
In elementary school we also did those times tables sheets. We had other games too, which often maximized humiliation among peers. I hated math and didn't think it was for me at all. It wasn't until highschool when I realized that there was more to math, and I could actually be good at it. When problems stopped being about mental calculations, and started being about solving problems, I felt much better about it.
This is a very relatable problem for me, just not with math. At school we’d always have a quota of how many books we had to read each month. This made me always feel very rushed and absolutely hate reading. Ever since middle school i’ve avoided it like the plague whenever i could.
Only recently a had the courage to actually pick up a book voluntarily and it’s not even that bad.
yeah....schools obliging people to read DOES NOT motivate them to read SPECIALLY when everyone has to read the same fucking book, its like going to a cake shop and saying: hey guys look at all this cake, cake is delicious, so many flavors! 'oh so can we pick one?' no we are all getting that one, every is eating the same flavor of cake, and also you have to remember its taste for the test
like bro wtf i got into reading fantasy coz of my dad giving me a random percy jackson book and i was like idk 11 or 12 but i never ever read a school book because holy fucking shit did i have negative interest in such titles
@@yankokassinof6710 exactly, we had to read ‘adult books’ which basically meant ‘vague, boring and unnecessarily depressing’. That does not at all sound fun or enticing.
that's so true. Although I actually enjoyed some of the school reads more so I enjoyed one particular read. I wanted to keep reading but I just can't get myself to pick up a book nowadays.
For me it was writing papers, especially in-class essays. And any form of public speaking. School basically turns everything that could be enjoyable into a giant pain in the ass.
This was me as a child. I’m a slow reader (at least compared to my peers) so it was always so discouraging when I would never meet my quotas. My teachers always made me feel so stupid about it too. It always felt unfair how my teachers praised students who hated math but the minute you hated reading, it meant you wouldn’t amount to anything. I only learned to like reading once I was able to do it at my own pace for fun.
Math anxiety could be unrelated to math entirely (and you definitely touched on this at one point); if we look at how people are rewarded and, more importantly, /punished/ when individuals get something "wrong" we can start to see where the avoidance behavior forms. We /punish/ wrong answers, mistakes, failures, etc. When a math test can be used to determine your entire future... it's obvious why people develop anxiety and avoidance.
I was very used to being wrong at math after 12 years of over-questioning everything my teachers told me to follow 'jst cause' and it didn't get better unless I was in a real-world situation in which I found it to be much less complicated and that I was almost always at least somewhere if not exactly in the right ball-park. Loved this study so much
The only math class i’ve ever truly enjoyed and succeeded at was Geometry because visualizing angles and shapes made sense to me in a way that numbers never could.
This was an interesting video but I think i’d rather stick to subjects that allow me to visualize and interpret things in my own way
too bad you didnt stick around for coordinate geometry classes. else those numbers would have made sense to you :)
i recommend you to a play a game called Geometry Dash
it has nothing to do with Geometry yet it is fun
For some reason this comment resonated a lot with me. I consider myself much better at geometry because it isn’t abstract and can be visualized properly by my mind
@TheGlassesPro Same here. I feel like the way Geometry is taught (or tested) in South Africa makes things more difficult. I have a friend who didn't do so well in Matric too. I suggest you try registering for the upcoming rewrite if possible. From there perhaps you could take a bridge year. Best of luck to you bro
@@LarisB Neither arithmetic nor algebra are abstract... like, not at all. You just failed to understand (Or were never tought) the entire point of how and why use them
I´ve hated maths for my entire life, until 6 months ago when i decided to finally confront them and follow my passion for space science and swap my major from cooking (2 years in) to physics.
This week I got admited to the uni I was keen on aplying to and now I´m only two months away from starting this next chapter in my life. I can say with certainty that I now like (If not love) maths. My entire school era was plagued with failed math courses and spending my summer in school so I could pass on to the next year.
All I can say is there´s a lot of factors in question. Mainly your will to learn and study, maturity, and each individual´s personal learning experience at school or early years in general. I´ve had to wait till im 20 years old so i can finally confront my irrational hate and fear towards numbers and it´s the most alive and fun (although tedious) I´ve felt and had since ages.
Thanks for this video! I'm a high school math teacher, and, among other things, I teach basic skills math. These are the students who struggle profoundly with math anxiety. My heart really goes out to these students, because, as you've pointed out, they are struggling precisely because of their fear of failure. In other words, these aren't the students who don't care about school. They aren't the ones refusing to work. Instead, they are the ones who care so deeply that they won't settle for anything but certainty, and that insistence on certainty has caused them to be paralyzed with anxiety about math. This caused a downward spiral of confidence and ability, until they eventually shut down. In addition to the ideas you've mentioned, I'd like to point out two strategies that can help students overcome math anxiety.
1. Make sure that students interact with math in a way that is not mandatory or transactional. If you think about it, the worst thing you can do for somebody afraid of math is to make sure that they only interact with it when their grade depends on it, and failure could be detrimental to their progress through school. This sort of captive, iron-fisted approach to education leads to a horribly unhealthy relationship with the content. If the only reason to do math is to avoid failure, then the only motivation for math is fear. There is no way to overcome math anxiety if you are only motivated by fear. Instead, I try to present my students each day with a discussion about a completely approachable problem that will never be graded. In fact, they usually don't even have to write anything down. Instead, we talk about ideas and approaches as a class, and we *seriously* celebrate our victories. This leads to a relationship with math that is not motivated by fear, but intrigue.
2. Ask the right questions. For my basic skills math class, I've really taken a liking to the "Is this possible?" type of questions. (For examples, see "The Bridges of Koenigsberg," "The Four Color Theorem," and "The Utilities Problem"). These types of questions are more approachable because you can't really fail if the problem might be impossible. Instead, you can take a few stabs at it, then take your best guess. Now... Can I brag for a moment? When asking these questions, I find that I often have students insisting that something *is* possible, when in fact it isn't. These are the same students that would shut down at the beginning of the year. What changed? They got used to the idea that persistence in math yields positive results, and the fear of failure was gone. At that point, they started to fall in love with the process of hunting down an answer. In other words, they started to fall in love with math.
My point is, math anxiety can be fixed, and the best way to go about it is to consider how to build a more healthy relationship with math. Interact with it voluntarily, value questions just as much as answers, and embrace the possibility of failure. I think you'll be happier for the trouble.
I wish I had you as a teacher. My math skills aren't horrible but I do get anxious due to a focus on not 'failing/making a mistake', and I feel like being in an environment where I would been encouraged to try regardless would've helped a lot.
It's crazy, in university a lot of students would take easy classes to complement their major and GPA score rather than picking minors they're interested in yet a bit challenging. When I went to my macro and microeconomics course, the teacher was sloppy, and the classroom had about 300 students, already you can predict how that went. I hated it also to be honest, but when I paid for a tutoring class made up of 30 other students, I loved it! The tutor seemed to be only a few years older than me, but she was attentive to the students and even asked a few of us if we understood when we look perplexed, I included. She taught it so well and got me so interested in it that I decided to minor in it, never regret it ever since. It's a shame that the qualification and pay of being a good teacher are so low.
I didn't do well at math as a kid (I don't remember it particularly stressing me out, just out of mostly "A"s, math was one of maybe 2 C subjects). Then in gr 6 it just clicked, I ended up a chapter ahead, learning the gr 7 math (listening in since it was a 6/7 split class), making tools to help the class visualize. Later grades I started figuring out easier ways to solve things (and my teacher rewarded it), and ended up getting math awards and taking enriched math (same as gifted, but single subject instead of whole course load). A lot of (if not most of) the mental tools and tricks I use now I figured out from observing and testing patterns - they were never taught.
Ironically, now I've forgotten all the formulas I learned in school (except pythagorean theorem, use that one all the time), and get very confused and physically pained trying to figure out how to calculate something (like how do I combine these variables into a formula to get the answer I'm looking for). It often takes several days, research (that's fruitless half the time because I don't understand it), and many wrong answers before I get it.
I also sometimes just don't bother with the math, and make random/nonrandom generators to try and work out if/what the answer(s) are, using approximated results instead of the precise probabilities
Math anxiety is one of the reasons that, when I was working in afterschool recreation programs, I always tried to push DnD as an activity. In addition to a lot of passive math skills that are being associated with fun, it teaches problem solving, vocabulary/literacy, social skills, and teamwork. Great game for kids, though you may need to adjust some stuff for your age group
I love math, it makes me really happy, and it's calming in a lot of ways for me (probably my autism talking lol) but I have had periods in my life where I hated math class, and it was never about the numbers, it was about teachers making me feel stupid when I did things differently than they did, or I took longer to understand a concept. I'm glad I received the support I needed outside of the classroom, and eventually made it to ap physics, where I really realized how to apply math to the real world. My physics teacher not only supported me when my home life was a mess, but he also taught through real world examples. He'd have us set up an experiment, then tell us to figure out, say, velocity, and then we'd figure out what the formula was on our own and as a class before he taught us the one the book had. It just made everything click for me.
Am autistic too but I absolutely despise math not cause of bad experience or teachers but cause of how math is overly complex for my autistic brain that why I love art easy to understand and no nonsensical stuff
@@ErenYeager-to8hr It's overly complex in general. Either you have the brain for it or you don't.
@@brandon9638 pretty much
of all 'math tutorials' I've seen, this is the only one that ACTUALLY helps. mentally, morally and emotionally.
OMG i have like a week since i found this channel and i declare myself addicted to you Sabrina and the way you explain things.
"I'd rather make fun of myself then a fool out of myself" is so relatable i can't even.
This really helped me figure out why I just got an 14/15 in my pharmacology-mathS exam at 26yo, but absolutely flunked every single mathS exam i ever had from 6-18yo. The only thing happening inbetween is a lot of cashier work (exposure) and some general anxiety therapy (learning how to take a breath and not panic).
Even though I did fail math last year, I still got a 92% of math this year (exams class tests homework notes mix together) as well this year was my first year of alegebra I could say I'm pretty proud of myself
Ok so for me, when I was in primary school I loved it - hated long multiplication sheets we did in class (like they just printed a new one each day sometimes) but ViHart was my favourite RUclipsr.
I loved videos like Cookie Shapes and What's the Deal with Pythagoras? Her music and Pi videos and interesting Geometry (like the plant ones) made me so interested!
Then come secondary school and I spent all of first year trying to enjoy maths when I couldn't. It was horrible. But now when I hear a topic like Pythagoras' theorem in class, I realise that my early experiences in maths are the reason that it was easier for me than some people.
I am thankful for that.
I had almost the exact same experience! The first person i ever subscribed to was vihart.
The way math is taught is so exclusionary and demoralizing. I really wish kids were taught in schools the ways math can be fun and beautiful. I think the only reason why I love math today was vi hart and a couple of good math teachers
I think vi hart was unironically the reason I got hooked on more abstract maths in primary school, her channel is amazing
A big trick in math is simplifying/converting something you can't do into something you can;
E.G. 6*7:
A: 2*3*7 ==> 2*21 ==> 42
B: 6*6+6 ==> 36+6 ==> 42
E.G. 9*6
A: 10*6 - 6 ==> 60-6 ==> 54
B: 3*3*6 ==> 3*18 ==> 3*20 - 3*2 ==> 60-6 ==> 54
E.G. 12*17
A: 10*17 + 2*17 ==> 170 + 2*17 ==> 170 + 2*10 + 2*7 ==> 170+20+14 ==> 204
B: 12 * 20 - 3*12 ==> (12*2)*10 - (3*6)*2 ==> 240 - 18*2 ==> 240 - (20*2 - 2*2) ==> 240 - (40-4) ==> 240 - 36 ==> 204
Really how you get there is unimportant, and playing with numbers in this way is kind of "fun" too. Edit: Lol, turns out that's what this video is about xD
That's actually what i do in my head when multiplying big numbers, im glad it's a valid way of doing math
When I was little, I was considered “gifted” so I never had to ask for help with anything
My little brother wasn’t “gifted” tho, so he would ask our dad for help when our mom was at work
I remember just my dad yelling all the time because my brother wouldn’t understand, and then he would start crying, my my dad got louder asking why he’s crying
So there’s my childhood trauma! How are you guys doing?
This brings back so many memories, I think this was one of the reasons why I hate math, I’ve never been good at it and during my formative years of first being taught multiplications my mom would yell at me because I didn’t understand it after she explained to me several times. One time I cried too much that my nose bleed and my math hw was cover with blood, sweat, and tears, literally.
@@ariiblink omg…I was always too scared to stand up to my dad in fear he would yell at or hit me, I hope you and your mother have a good relationship now
Ah yes, I was the little brother in your story only except I was the older sibling. Did your little brother have to stay up super late until they somehow understood the assignment? I tried as much as possible to ask my mom for help because my dad kind of sucked at explaining how to do something. My brother had a similar issue but with english assignments because creative writing isn't his thing.
I'm starting to get why my insomnia started to happen as a kid now that I write this comment..
wow this does bring back memories! I was also a slow learner back in elementary... I am untill now, but it was way worse back then, like... I had to draw 1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1 all over the edges of my math book till it reaches like 138, just so I can multiply it to another "set of ones", like how stupid is that?!?!
sure enough, I was crying the whole time in class because I recognized how slow my comprehension was compared to the rest of my class. btw, no one was rly being aggressive at me (or maybe I repressed that memory), but the humiliation is really freaking killing me, so I transferred schools after that
(I already threw this memory down the gutter, man. I can't believe that a RUclips comment has the ability to unlock this sht wtf 😂 I srsly didn't remember why I transferred so thanks for the reminder)
@@ineedsleep4071 LOL no problem 💀
weirdly, my overwhelming math anxiety went away after i decided to challenge myself by taking a difficult math class. i was transferred to a higher grade math class in 6th grade (so i studied 7th grade math in 6th) but no one ever taught me the material i had skipped so i always felt 3 steps behind in all of my advanced math classes, while all my peers looked confident and said everything was easy. in ap calculus, though, i had a notoriously difficult teacher and for the first time in my life i wasn’t the only one who didn’t know what the hell was going on. there was a weird, supportive camaraderie in the class because we all knew EVERYONE was struggling and over time i started seeing math as a fun challenge to be solved rather than an panic attack waiting to happen. over time (and with the help of a study group) i found myself consistently getting some of the highest grades in the class, it was a very strange and wonderful experience
So if everyone was lost, the "highest grades in class" weren't actually that high, were they? ;P
@@lonestarr1490LMAO fair enough but they were still (mostly) in the A-B range!
@@katiasergeeva9318 Good good. Always nice when it clicks for someone :)
I went into engineering school for this exact reason… My maths anxiety dates back to a primary school teacher who regularly bullied me in front of the class, but somehow more advanced abstract subjects freak me out a lot less x)) I’m more at ease with linear algebra than basic calculus, it’s a bit fucked up
@@sofialpaca2563 Actually, it isn't. Those two things work completely differently and, as far as I know, you utilize different brain reagions for them as well. I've heard about people suffering from dyscalculia (like dyslexia, but for numbers and basic operations) who went on to study math. It's really not the same.
You sometimes have to calculate things in math, that's true. But sometimes you also have to saw through bone in medicine. That doesn't make medicine sawing. (Maybe, as far as analogies go, that one's more on the clunky side, but I hope it's clear what I'm trying to say.)
For me, it was teachers forcing me to "show my work" instead of just letting me get the answer in my head. And wouldn't ya know it, my mental math suffered for for it.
This is one of my biggest pet peeves, as someone who struggles to put conclusions into words. There is no reason for them to do that unless they themselves need to know what the heck their talking about.
You should always show your working, how is that controversial??
@@epicmarschmallow5049 Because it breaks flexibility. I'm sure we've all experienced getting the answer right but it's wrong cause the way we got to that answer wasn't up to the teacher's standard. Who cares how you got the answer? I got the answer right, move on!
The whole reason you’re told to show you’re working, is because later on when it’s impossible to get the answer without writing your working, you’ll struggle massively, because you haven’t practiced enough.
If you’ve always skipped writing the first and/or second step, you’re going to try skipping the third and fourth as well. If you then get it wrong, how are you going to know why?
@@Diggydogsp you miss my point entirely. By exercising my mental math skills, getting a wrong answer wouldn't be an issue.
13:00 just so you know Sabrina, a Taylor Swift reference is always relevant. Especially when referring to RED (Taylor’s Version)
I love mathematicians and engineers. The more of them there are the less likely I am to have to do math.
yeah, when you need to compare an offer between buying something for 144 dolars or 13x12 i guess you'll just have to call your mom to do the math for you, or pull out your calculator and do the math 3x slower than your average chinese 10 year old. Good solution actually.
@@luizcastro5246 damn toxic
@@luizcastro5246 If you are making a decision that is important enough to require math you should probably take your time anyway. There is rarely a rush and I’ve always got a calculator.
@@luizcastro5246 In that situation there's no downside to use a calculator except for a few seconds lost.
@@luizcastro5246 when you stereotype asian people 😁
I think it's the fact that at some point, math classes can be useless yet we HAVE to learn them and doing badly in them can harm our grade and makes our degrees and graduations much more difficult.
Like, I have to focus on Statistics and Chemistry classes that I wouldn't even actually use in my career nor would I remember them after the class is over. And doing all those complex math problems and working hard for something that feels worthless in the long run just feels like a waste of money, time and just makes my life difficult for absolutely no reason.
yes this is my exact thought. it goes for all classes we are forced to take that go beyond basic stuff you need to know when you should go more into it only if you want to
Yep, I feel that as soon as you learn percentages math becomes useless. Why would I need Trigonometry or calculus when I want to presume a career in art? All it does is stress me out.
But I mean that goes for every subject in a way, unless a really good teacher teaches it. I mean I don’t use most of the stuff I learned in german nowadays(I’m german) and I absolutely hated it - more of a science school person.
It’s rather that there’s such a big fear of math/ hatred that so many people see it as unnecessary in my opinion.
Obv not everyone.
personally, it's a grey area. Keeping maths like algebra or trig is fine as a brain exercise, but I prefer if it wasnt so essential for passing
@@StarlightNkyra And why do I need art when I want to pursue a career in maths? (More like, IT stuff, but still)
It's not like maths is the only subject that after a certain points will deal with stuff not everyone will use, I'd go as far as saying all subjects are like that for someone
Depends on the school system though
when i was in primary (elementary) school i was sooo good at maths - like doing maths tests two years above me. as soon as i got to secondary (middle/high school) i was placed with other boys who are some of the best mathematicians in the uk, and i soon realised that i wasnt some maths prodigy. the first est i got back i did one of the worst in the class and this humiliation was compounded by the fact that when the teacher revealed someone got full marks the whole class was dead set it was me (because id got the first a* in english). as time went on maths became harder and harder and harder - i still somehow managed to work my way up from bottom to top set but i didnt get top marks in GCSEs like the rest of my class did.
maths anxiety is something i resonate with, ive always been particularly worked up during maths tests/exams, but especially if any sort of problem solving is required. as soon as the answer is not immediately obvious i feel my brain shrivel up in embarrassment and anger at myself because i know my peers would know how to answer the question almost immediately.
My first math-specific memory was in second grade when I was struggling with subtraction. I hadn’t finished a worksheet by the time everyone else was done, so my teacher had me sit in the hallway alone until I finished while, she taught the next lesson to everyone else.
My worst math-specific memory was in my one required math course in college. We started every class with a quiz, and it was pretty common that the professor would pick up the quizzes before I had finished. I advocated for myself and told him I needed more time, and he was extremely kind and understanding. Unfortunately, it backfired. Next time we took a quiz, everyone had finished but me, and he announced to the class that “some people are still working, please stay quiet, blah blah blah.” But it was OBVIOUSLY just me. So I felt like the whole class was staring at me. I don’t know if I even finished the quiz, I might have just given up. And I don’t remember how exactly it happened, but I do remember that I ended up leaving class early crying after asking a dumb question and hearing some giggling. It was brutal.
Not in case of math,but I've learned to ignore the giggling.Atleast you've made an effort,and THAT MATTERS.
If you've done a mistake,learn from it,bit by bit,and it'll be worth it.
I hated maths because when I was younger, my dad used to scream at me when I didn’t know the answer, teachers did the same thing. Now, im giving maths a chance again
You will suffer in Algebra,is a hell that shit,are all the same crap.
My difficulty with math has always been lack of confidence and how we were made to learn it with time pressure. I don't cope well with short time limits - deadlines weeks in advance are fine, but if I only have a few minutes to do something my mind goes completely blank and I become paralysed because all I can think about is the clock ticking down. I learn much better working at my own pace, but that wasn't an option for me in school. Rather than allowing me to start slow and increase my speed naturally as I became better and more confident, I felt forced to work to someone else's pace that I wasn't confident in.
I remember once in grade 4 they had us do timed 2 times tables and then everyone in the class who got 100% stood up, and I was the only one not standing. I was then told off and it was so humiliating I wanted to die. It wasn't that I didn't know the answers, it was that I couldn't take the pressure. And it's pressure that I don't face in my adult life so it was completely unnecessary - there has never been a time where I absolutely need to do a times table on the spot in a few seconds.
There were times in high school, with specific teachers, where I actually really enjoyed maths and excelled at it. I actually had FUN doing EQUATIONS. But then I'd go back to more traditional maths teachers and my hatred/anxiety would return. I honestly think that the way math is taught is a major contributor to why so many people hate it and struggle with it.
This right here is my opinion on maths in a bottle ☝️
I tutored math for like 25 years and the two big chunks I usually had to deal with were the emotions of the student and then the fiddly bits of actually doing math.
All of these problems really are just mental health problems, or people having bad experiences with bad teachers or abusive parents. Math is math and it's really just a concept that you need to familiarize yourself with to understand, like any other concept or subject. Some people don't have a natural talent but most people have the ability to learn it. Since teachers are bad at teaching, struggling students don't realize that the reason they are struggling is not because they aren't cut out to do math but because they don't understand the fundamentals behind why math is done. But since the curriculum sucks, there's no time to explore that so only the kids with a natural inclination towards it succeed.
If you can learn anything, there's no reason why you wouldn't be able to learn math, unless you have a mental illness or disagree with math as a whole.
@@sebaschan-uwu I couldn't memorize my times tables the entire time of K-12. I would get to where I would remember them for a while, but then when there was periods where I didn't do multiplying much (like summers off in particular) I would forget them completely. I was horrible at anything requiring mental math. It was like my brain would lock up when it came to doing math. I hated math with a passion so didn't go to college or anything like that because I didn't see how I could possibly succeed if math was gonna be required.
Later in my early 30's I revisited the times tables to see if I could do any better than when I was a kid. With a little work I was able to memorize them much easier somehow. It's like some connections I previously was unable to access were now active. Would've been nice if it worked that way while I was in school. I think living out in the real world had something to do with it, because sitting in a classroom not actually doing anything in the real world is non-conducive to learning for me.
It’ll be the first day of math class and the teacher would be like, “We’re already behind.” 😅
My dad was a maths teacher and he'd berate us for failing it. It made me even more anxious to the point of hating it and giving up. I literally chose to become a lawyer because it involved the least amount of maths. I still had to do two maths courses in law school though (Accounting for Lawyers).
@@snakeflake7773 get taught or tutored by their dad when they didn't understand it because he is a math teacher
@@snakeflake7773 🤡
@@snakeflake7773
Ah yes, the automatic blaming when you know only two sentences of this person's life. Great job.
@@snakeflake7773 And? It's not as easy as saying, "Well they obviously failed because they were lazy!" You don't know the context, and it's a bit rude to just assume that is the one and only reason. Maybe their dad put too much pressure on them. Maybe they had other things going on in their life. You would never know.
@@snakeflake7773 you’re making an absolute clown of yourself with your stupid comments. You don’t know the other person’s lived experiences, stop assuming
That game is actually really useful. When I was tutoring highschoolers, a large part of their problem was often that they were just too slow because they were bad at basic arithmetic. Because everything builds on that, they were just struggling to get through their assignments and would fall behind. I'd advise them to play a very similar game for practice, and it seemed to really help.
As an aside, I'd also advise to just learn the tables for 1-12 by heart (ie repeat them until there's just no more thought involved between someone asking 6x7 and you saying 42). When those basic calculations are just baked into your brain, everything else becomes a lot faster.
When you tutor kids + recommend they memorize the times tables, are they memorizing how to solve them, or just the answers?
I've never been able to memorize the times tables, and I've been trying to get tested for dsycalculia since I was 16 because I just can't understand maths 👀
@@doctorwholover1012 just memorizing the answers. Of course it's also important to learn to do multiplication, but you shouldn't have to do that for those basic versions. It's important to get to the point where getting the answer to something like 8x7 is no longer a matter of calculation but of retrieval, or you're just spending too much time and mental effort on it to move on to the more interesting parts of mathematics that build on it (algebra, calculus, trigonometry, probability...).
Where I'm from, we only learn the multiplication tables up to 10, which to me makes more sense than up to 12
@@ttmfndng201 11 is really easy and 12 is still very useful, but you're right.
I'd also recommend learning 16-times (you can skip 11-15) and powers of two as well. Multiples of 16 and powers of two come up all the time in computing.
When I was 7, my father made me cry and hide in the dog's basket because I couldn't read 50 - I kept reading it as 15. I only just now realised that might have traumatised me into math anxiety.