getting over math phobia

[Crankin]

I think the right side of my brain is pretty much non-existent .
I can't do a puzzle with more than 4 pieces (like the pre-school kind) and I don't play board games or cards, either. You are right Badger; it's not math per se, it's logic/strategy. Even games where words are involved (Scrabble), if there's strategy, I fail dismally. And, I'm an excellent speller, with a good vocabulary. I can see the big picture when it's a social situation or feelings are involved, or how to plan a multi-step project involving many people, but not the big picture with right brain stuff.
The most math I ever learned was when i was co-teaching 7th grade math as an inclusion specialist. It was a regular class, with all levels of kids. The teacher, one of my teammates, explained things in a way that I finally learned it. Of course, it was all project based and hands-on. And she wisely forced me to take over the planning and teaching for weeks at a time, to raise my confidence. But, I was always feeling one step ahead of the kids.

[jacobadam]

Do you feel little frustrated when you think about doing maths homework? I have seen many students are fearing about their maths home work. You know by research confirms the pressure of timed test and risk of public embarrassment have been recognized as the source of major weakness of students. Students myths about maths in general that create mistaken ideas about how maths concepts and ideas fit into our world. By avoiding students maths fear we should provide the awareness for students about the simplicity of mathematics.

[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...

[grey]

Oy. Math. I'm like Muirenn. I was a science major, I love science, all science - but math??? Math made me have to change my major, and I so wish it could have been different.

For myself, I know it's psychological. I've kinda wished we could have a kid, so I can try again to learn alongside Junior, and create a positive, cooperative environment. I was yelled at, threatened, hit upside the head with the math book, spanked, and dragged out of my chair by my hair for not understanding algebra. My troubles started long before then, nobody was willing to sit with me and help me learn my multiplication tables. My mom just threatened to make me eat the cards if I didn't learn them, and then once I got to school the following Monday and I didn't pass the oral testing for it, I was made to sit alone in the classroom while all my classmates went to the next room to watch a movie as a reward/punishment. Even then, the teacher made to watch over me never offered to help me learn, she just acted grumpy and sat at her desk.

I was home schooled starting in 6th grade, and while I think everything else was great and I highly recommend home schooling, Mom is definitely not comfortable around math, was easily frustrated by it herself and probably should have just hired a tutor.

I still don't know all my multiplication tables. I created a few mental "cheats" that have let me get by through life. I got through College Algebra by the skin of my teeth - dropped out of it twice, and finally found a professor who said, if struggling students would come to his office during hours and honestly show him they were trying, he'd pass them with a "C".

One thing I discovered during that class - if I did not do the problems every day, and I do mean EVERY day, I couldn't remember them at all the day after. Not one bit. I'd look at the problems done, in my notebook, in my handwriting, and not recall a bit of it. It was the weirdest thing! So I learned in order to pass, I had to never miss a day.

However - I LOVE STATISTICS! First time I ever enjoyed "math" and was being asked to help several other students. I kept my class notes from that one for many many years.

Anyway, yes, if there were a way to learn math in a positive environment, then I'd be all for it!

[Bethany1]

You aren't dumb. I promise. It takes time for our brains to understand the concepts and work through the problems.

The way math is taught in schools is pathetic and unless you have a teacher that knows how to explain concepts you lose out. I look at my kids' mathbooks and even I don't get it. There are no explanations of how a problem is solved. They are supposed to get that in class. My kids have to go to the internet to do their homework. It makes me wonder why I pay taxes if my kids are getting a better education via the internet.

When I was in college there were 500 people in my math class. The first day the professor said that most of us would fail if we didn't get help. I almost raised my hand and asked, "Is that because you suck and have tenure?" If I'm almost guaranteed to fail, that's a sad way to teach students. My TA was from Denmark and you could barely understand what he said. The math book was useless. She was right. I failed.

You have something that most of didn't have growing up. The internet. I would have killed to have access to so much information while in school and the little bit of college I had. The math information out there is wonderful and I make my kids look up stuff they don't understand. Take advantage of it and work through the concepts you don't understand. The lightbulb will go on.

Math is a beautiful language. It explains the beauty of the universe from the smallest particles to the vastness of space. It gives order to everything that exists. Even music has math in it creating the melodies that we love.

I use math in my quilting and it helps explain different concepts that I didn't understand before. I can do fractions, add, multiply, figure out areas (how many 5 inch squares fit into a yard of fabric?) If I want to make a complex block via my software, I need math to do it. Designing a Mariner's Compass block takes a lot of geometry.

Look for something you can relate to, like I do in quilting. It will help so much. It's visual and I get automatic results.

[GLC1968]

I think a lot of math phobics are people who have always been taught to approach math the same way, and the way math is almost always taught appeals to the wrong side of a math phobics brain. Even standard word problems don't really manage to circumvent the usual approach. And since math teachers are people who "got" math, they can't see how to teach it any differently than what works for them.

This. Big time.

I was good at math as a child but when I changed HS middle of my freshman year, I got tracked at a level lower than the good math students and while I got 'A's in the courses I did take, they weren't the tough math courses. I ended up in college in a sociology major because I just didn't gravitate towards math anymore because I felt I'd missed out on so much and was 'behind'. My best grade in my enitre sociology degree was in my statistics classes but that still didn't enlighten me.

Fast forward a decade or so and I found myself back in school with a bent towards engineering because I really, really enjoyed calculus now that I was taking it (finally). And I was getting all A's because math (and science) came easy to me. Who knew? Funny thing was, I was also asked by my calculus teacher to tutor because I seemed to have a different approach to the problems than the other students. I ended up tutoring algebra (not calculus) and really helping some math phobics 'get it' because I came at everything in a different way than their teachers or text books did. For me, it was about seeing the problem as they saw it and then finding a way to explain it that made sense to them. Of course, as a tutor working in a one-on-one situation, I had a luxury that teachers don't have. I could custom tailor my approach.

Anyway, for anyone who can't 'get' math - a good tutor can make all the difference. And I would also say that if you can't find a good tutor, keep looking. Finding one you connect with is KEY and one size does not fit all.

[badger]

my boyfriend and I looked at some math problems online. I was able to remember a lot of the algebra ones, but oh.my.goodness, I was so sorely lost with trigonometry. Sin, Cos, Tan, yikes!! I remember having a horrible go of it, and like back then, my mind quickly shut down. It was quite sad.

He's reading a book on quantum physics right now, and I must say most of what he's telling me is utter gibberish to me.

[Owlie]

my boyfriend and I looked at some math problems online. I was able to remember a lot of the algebra ones, but oh.my.goodness, I was so sorely lost with trigonometry. Sin, Cos, Tan, yikes!! I remember having a horrible go of it, and like back then, my mind quickly shut down. It was quite sad.

He's reading a book on quantum physics right now, and I must say most of what he's telling me is utter gibberish to me.

Remember, if you think you understand quantum physics, you don't understand quantum physics.

[PscyclePath]

The way math is taught in schools is pathetic and unless you have a teacher that knows how to explain concepts you lose out. I look at my kids' mathbooks and even I don't get it. There are no explanations of how a problem is solved. They are supposed to get that in class. My kids have to go to the internet to do their homework. It makes me wonder why I pay taxes if my kids are getting a better education via the internet.

You have something that most of didn't have growing up. The internet. I would have killed to have access to so much information while in school and the little bit of college I had. The math information out there is wonderful and I make my kids look up stuff they don't understand. Take advantage of it and work through the concepts you don't understand. The lightbulb will go on.

I dodn't have the internet in grad school, either... it came along three or four years later ;-) But what I did find that I didn't have back in my undergraduate courses was a set of books, "The ______ Problem Solver" series, which covered p-chem, calculus, etc. They used a large example of common poblems and showed a step-by-step way to solve each one, with a nice bit of narration. I still have most of mine.

I didn't really appreciate math except as a way to get to a finite number until I took abstract algebra in my senior year. Probably the most useful (and still the most (and most favorably) remembered math class I took. I had a hard time with the abstract concepts of random X, Y, and Z representing some ill-defined quantities. But when I got into p-chem and those abstract variables turned into pressure, temperature, volume, and concentration, something I could clearly relate to, it all made a lot better sense and my ability to deal with it sharply improved. But I still remember in the first semester of p-chem, memorizing all the steps of a thermodynamic derivation the same way some people would memorize a poem, just so's I could scribble it all down on the Friday exams ;-)

[Owlie]

I didn't really appreciate math except as a way to get to a finite number until I took abstract algebra in my senior year. Probably the most useful (and still the most (and most favorably) remembered math class I took. I had a hard time with the abstract concepts of random X, Y, and Z representing some ill-defined quantities. But when I got into p-chem and those abstract variables turned into pressure, temperature, volume, and concentration, something I could clearly relate to, it all made a lot better sense and my ability to deal with it sharply improved. But I still remember in the first semester of p-chem, memorizing all the steps of a thermodynamic derivation the same way some people would memorize a poem, just so's I could scribble it all down on the Friday exams ;-)

Similar to my experience. Chemistry-math made far more sense to me than math-math, at least in part because there were units attached to most of these variables. Didn't really help me with p-chem 2, though.

[OakLeaf]

That's funny, because I had the exact opposite experience.

By now I've forgotten 95% of the math I ever learned, but as a very abstract thinker, what I do remember is sailing through multivariate calculus while the engineering students struggled to visualize six dimensions.

[pll]

I was a math minor and I took several equation-based classes, but the class that I really enjoyed (called Foundations of Higher Math or something equally as descriptive) was sort of a concept/language based course. Not like word problems like Moe, Joe, and Zoey, but concepts like and, or, and not, etc. I'm not sure how to describe it, it was almost like taking a computer programming class that was translated for the other side of your brain (and trust me, it was the total opposite. I got a D in my C++ class, and a 97 in this class). Our textbook was about a quarter of an inch thick, labeled something like "logistics" and it just made everything make so much sense.

Sounds like formal logic to me... loved that subject when I was an undergrad!

[Veronica]

The way math is taught in schools is pathetic and unless you have a teacher that knows how to explain concepts you lose out. I look at my kids' mathbooks and even I don't get it. There are no explanations of how a problem is solved. They are supposed to get that in class.

That assumes they are doing the students' job of paying attention and writing down the examples covered in class. That they are asking for clarification when they don't understand. Teachers are not mind readers.

Do you have any idea how many students come to me not knowing basic math facts? I'm talking simple addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. The sort of stuff that you're suppose to drill until you know it. Trouble is, there are some kids who need more drill then can be provided in class time. They don't get drilled at home, so by the time they get to me at 5th grade, they're still counting on their fingers. They are so caught up in acquiring the basics, that they can't get the more abstract concepts that we're starting in 5th grade.

I have kids who don't understand why we call a quarter, a quarter. I am constantly astounded by the lack of background knowledge my students possess. They no longer know how to read a regular clock, so talking about a quarter of an hour, is a totally foreign concept. Students who have never realized that .o1 is like a penny and .10 is like a dime, so of course they are not the same thing.

I've spent this week in class myself, taking a class on teaching problem solving to students - yeah 37 hours on how to teach problem solving to kids, when I should still be on vacation. The hardest thing about problem solving, is that students just want the answer - they don't care about the process. And they want the answer now. They don't want to persevere. "Let's just look up the answer on the Internet."

Don't tell me that the job we do is pathetic. Most of us are pretty passionate and concerned about what is going on in our classrooms. We are after all paid such an exorbitant amount of money for what we do. And if you think it's an easy, cushy job, go do it yourself. I've spent on average two hours of every day of my vacation working on stuff for the upcoming academic year. I spend about 3,000 dollars of my own money on things for my classroom every year. And no, I don't get reimbursed and I don't claim it as charitable donation on my taxes.

It's so easy to say that education is failing our children. But it's not education - it's all the other stuff that's happening in their lives, or not happening when it should be.

Veronica