getting over math phobia

[roo4]

I don't know of any courses, but I've always thought that there was probably a big psychological barrier for many people who aren't good with math. I know some people have more of an aptitude for it than others, but thinking "I can't do math" -- or hearing your parents say it when you start bringing home poor grades in it -- can't possibly make things easier.

I read an article in Scientific American a couple years back. The gist was that some people consider math skills to be innate, and some think of it as something that can be gained with practice. This meant that when kids were faced with a math problem, some kids didn't attempt it because they thought they "couldn't do math" and others considered it to be a challenge or a puzzle to be solved. Leave the "can't" behind and think of it as a mountain to be climbed. Perhaps slowly, but so what?

[PscyclePath]

I have a minor in math and a master's degree in p-chem, but am still strictly a cookbook mathematician when it gets above basic algebra ;-) Once I look up the equation, I can usually get it right, but I do have to go back to the books and slavishly follow the "recipe."

Tom

[Owlie]

My majors were biology and chemistry. No way I could avoid it. And I loved chemistry, but math has always been my weak subject--even compared to English. I did pretty well in geometry, but struggled with algebra and precalc. And in college, I got a D in the semester of calculus that covered derivatives but got a very high B in the semester that covered integrals (over the summer!). I did pretty well in statistics, but I'm pretty sure that's because it was a joke--open book/open note tests, for example.

What I think worked with these courses was "I need to do well..." and as I started doing my homework and checking my answers (or getting my engineering student BF do check them for me) I realized that I was actually getting them right. Helped my confidence enormously.

That doesn't mean I went into chemistry (I don't have the math skills for physical chemistry, nor the spatial reasoning for organic), or that I'm not still a little apprehensive about the biostatistics course I have coming up...