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[miauw62]

Oh, hey. I just had a math exam. Expect my own wall of text soon-ish.

[CandyGale]

I find too many teachers are not sufficiently competent. This may be especially apparent in math ― perhaps because of how abstract it is ― but it applies to other subjects as well.

Personally, I had great teachers in junior high and high school, and consequently did well on average, despite the fact that I performed well below average in my own class.

[GlyphGryph]

Imagine learning multiplication in a single week. Now imagine learning +, -, X, /, and Algebra in a single week and needing to in order to keep up.
That is how math ends up. You stop getting small little chunks to allow you to learn and end up needing to learn entire complicated concepts with complicated impliments with even more complicated language.
Advanced math has no mercy as a subject. While other courses try to pace themselves, Math just drops you on your head and hopes you retain it.

A single week is seven hours. It should not take seven hours to teach an understanding of multiplication, if a student has a strong grounding in addition. And I've not noticed math being any worse about this than, say, history, biology, chemistry, physics - it all depends on the quality of the teacher. Frumple does a good job of explaining why there are so many bad Math teachers, in particular, but realistically huge chunks of the average math class I've been through has been absolutely wasted through poor teaching. Even the teachers I've had that actually had some understanding of math (and tried to teach it well) were, sad to say, pretty poor teachers.

Math, up to the high school level, is a lot simpler than you seem to think. But it requires have some understanding of how those simple pieces that make it up /work/ in order to realize it.

[mainiac]

Reading this thread I'm kinda surprised that no education reformers have proposed introducing limited amounts of 1 on 1 math tutoring into the system.  Just occasional amounts of tutoring could make a big impact and education reform tends to fetishize math.

[Frumple]

There are actually varying tutoring systems in some areas of the states, sometimes directly through the schools and sometimes in liaison with other organizations, such as libraries. Nothing systematic, but it's implemented to a limited degree in limited places. Generally the big bottleneck is they can't or won't pay for it, so the programs are reliant on volunteer work and depending on the area that can be in pretty short supply. E: Plus they're usually outside of normal school hours and good luck getting meaningful attendance for that.

One on one instruction in general is having a hard time making penetration into the larger education system for varying reasons (usually cost related, from what I understand. Better fund allocation if not more funding could help, but that has its own issues.) despite the well documented and well known massive boon it is for a student's education.

[Sigulbard]

Could I use this as an excuse to provide whenever I do badly at math? Hm...I bet I can.

Or you could ask people here and gain enough of an understanding that you could breeze through your math classes.

The real problem is that I don't spend enough time actually learning the stuff. When I don't get it at first glance, I stop paying attention. Now when I actually bother to memorize all those problem solving processes and formulas, I can do rather finely.

[Neonivek]

Math, up to the high school level, is a lot simpler than you seem to think. But it requires have some understanding of how those simple pieces that make it up /work/ in order to realize it

I meant Post highschool.

As well 7 hours in a week? Maybe in Mathland.

[Zrk2]

I'll throw my hat into the ring for PMs, but only up to highschool level calculus.

[Kirbypowered]

To end my comment at the beginning, I, too, am open to PMs on math help up to advanced high school maths, though I'm a little rusty now and it might just be for my own benefit.

I've had a bit of luck in that my math teachers always seemed to have a good background in math (ignoring elementary school...), but still ended up teaching about the rules/laws of math and that you've gotta follow them. Thinking about it, I remember a teacher or two explaining that there were "a couple" other ways to do this or that, but that this way was the best. Pah. I feel like I just let it all guide my thinking...

In any case, this has never stopped me from absolutely loving math. Working within the limitations I was given, which I kind of wish I tried to break out of now, I enjoyed simply throwing numbers into formulae and seeing what would come out. Someone earlier in the thread mentioned that there wasn't much use for long division, but man do I love playing with it anyways. I never really met anyone else in school that honestly loved math the way I do. =(

[MaximumZero]

Math. It's not my favorite subject. In fact, it's not even in the top ten. I am a person who does not understand math. There's a reason I made one of the Math help threads. It feels so alien, foreign, and pointless. I did okay as a kid, better than my peers, but the endless rote busywork drove me insane with hatred for the agonizing pointlessness of it all. As a teen, I just stopped caring and never looked back. English, science (yes, even the bits with math stuck in, and those horrible half-math-half-science amalgamations like physics,) history/geography, music, and art were my strong suits, so I focused on those. In my junior high/high school days, that was basically everything but math and sports, and I was in martial arts, too. I did what I had to do to graduate and only that. Thirteen years later, I'm a college student. I had some "difficult" (advanced algebra, calculus, some linear algebra, ratios, vectors, matrices, stuff like that,) math classes for Computer Science, even though we weren't using anything more than the most basic of math (+, -, *, /, and %) in our programming. The math and programming never really lined up for me, so I never saw the point. Then, after failing everything in a semester, I gave up on CompSci, and turned into a generalist, just looking for a degree. I'm currently avoiding all math like the plague.

What would have driven me, and would still drive me, to do math is simple: A way to see it like the mathematician does. From the outside looking in, pure math is utterly, disgustingly, infuriatingly pointless. All I see is the endless busywork of learning formulas and never actually doing anything of importance with them, and it turns my stomach. Tell me, what art is there to be done with math? Where is the beauty? I like making things of beauty, but for all the "wonder" of the number, all I ever manage to get is a repeated bludgeoning with a 400lb textbook. If I, and I'm sure many other students, could make something beautiful with mathematics, even if it were simple, I would probably grab hold with both hands instead of pushing away with both hands.

[CandyGale]

Reading this thread I'm kinda surprised that no education reformers have proposed introducing limited amounts of 1 on 1 math tutoring into the system.

One on one instruction in general is having a hard time making penetration into the larger education system for varying reasons (usually cost related, from what I understand. Better fund allocation if not more funding could help, but that has its own issues.) despite the well documented and well known massive boon it is for a student's education.

One-on-one teaching is very, very costly. Finding enough instructors is only one of the problems. Over here, schools do implement it, but only in a very limited amount and intended for those performing poorest.

I have personally had interest in studying math on my own beyond my very basic university level knowledge, but there seem to be very few resources suitable for this.

[Zangi]

Basic Math...  I was told to use the calculator, despite not really needing it.  Meh, it may have had a detrimental effect on the speed at witch I can do easy maths on my own.

Showing work... takes a lot of work too.  I hated that.

[mainiac]

One-on-one teaching is very, very costly. Finding enough instructors is only one of the problems. Over here, schools do implement it, but only in a very limited amount and intended for those performing poorest.

One on one instruction does require a 1-1 ratio of students to teachers but even the occasional hour of it could make a big difference.  If you had one tutor for 120 students they could give each student 1 hour a month, which would be a big, big step up from the current level of instruction IMHO.  If you can just wake people up to what math is it could do so much good.

[penguinofhonor]

For example, I never memorized 8*9. But being a Person Who Understands Math who did memorize 9*9, I was generally able to convert 8*9 into 81-9 and do that in my head fast enough that the examiners couldn't tell the difference.

Don't you steal my method. I mean, I know all the low shit, but I do this sort of stuff all the time for anything above twelve. x*17? Just do x*10, x*5, and x*2.

If this is anything special, I was unaware of it.

[miauw62]

Oh man, I have things to discuss here, I really do. For example, we always get extended questions on our math exams, to see wich students are further ahead than others. These generally include things we didn't strictly learn in school. This time, it was a few things on powers. "How much is 4^5 . 2^5? Circle the right answer". Spent some time scribbling on a paper to figure that one out, and I eventually ended up on 2^15, by discerning that 2^2 = 4^1, but that you just don't write that ^1. Seems to be the general way I do that kinda stuff, just messing around until I find the right answer if it's something I don't know. I have a friend that can calculate quick as fuck and calculated 4^5 times 2^5 and all the answers. The OP made me realize that I could probably have solved it by making it into 2.2.2.2.2.4.4.4.4.4 and going from there, but hey.

Our teacher seems to do a pretty good job of teaching the abstract aspects, and the book we use explained multiplication of powers pretty well, in that 5^5 : 5^3 = 5^2 because (5.5.5.5.5)/(5.5.5) = 5.5 was literally said in some of the excercices that we have to make. But then again, I feel like I'm pretty good at math. But I can also feel hindered by the methods, specifically the ones that aren't clearly explained or ridiculously detailed. For example, congruent triangles, a topic that was on our exam this term. To prove it, we have learned quite a specific method based on definitions, wich works fine for the relatively simple questions we had. But then there's this extended question, wich goes for 6 points, quite a lot if you consider that most extended questions go for 1-3 points, in wich you have to prove the congruence in a more complex situation. So you have to start putting several defintions togheter at the sides and such. So I just decided to sacrifice some of my points for convenience sake and put a + between the names of the definitions I applied. I'll probably lose a few points to it, but hell.

This may be a bit off-topic and rambly here, but meh. Don't want to let such a wall of text go to waste.

E: Oh, and excuse me for using . as *, that's how we learn it here.

E2: I also commonly use the 8.9 = 81 - 9 shorcut. Very convenient.