If you're weak at maths does that mean your thick?

Candie wrote: »

I'm good at maths and excelled in secondary school, always doing well in exams and being in the top 10% of my year of 120 to 200 throughout secondary.

However I have zero confidence in my ability, which I put down to the sarcastic and belittling teacher I had in my final two years of primary school in Ireland who made a game out of making me second guess myself and belittling any small mistake I made. I've no idea what motivated him to behave like that, but he shouldn't have been a teacher.

I don't think being bad at maths makes you thick, and I don't think lack of interest in maths means you're 'bad' at it either. I think we all have our interests and our strong points and that's what makes the world go round.

Could it also be dunning kruger? Where people who are smarter have a greater understanding of their limitations?

BabyE wrote: »

Apparently in France it is rude to be on time, so if you say you will be there at 6 you should probably arrive a little later. Probably bull**** but it's what I've heard.

In France it's rude to do anything, and they still do it anyway.

Candie wrote: »

A bad teacher can do a lot of damage, a bad teacher who psychologically damages a kids confidence as well can scar you for life.

That's certainly true, I grew up in the 80s when it was acceptable for a teacher to beat, humiliate and belittle kids. The headmaster of my school when I was growing up certainly ruined education for me. If you didn't fit into his idea of normal then you were ostracised, beat and humiliated into doing as you were told.

If I had the interest I have in learning now back then, I think I'd have done much better in school and be a very different person.

steddyeddy wrote: »

It's never too late dude! Go back if you can.

I do education at my own pace now, I've also found in the workplace practical experience trumps a lot of traditional education. You can do a specific course and get the piece of paper you need. You've often done all the practical work and gotten the experience so the course is literally a piece of paper, you learn next to nothing at the course itself.

Candie wrote: »

Teachers who bully, or who just can't teach, need to be much more sackable.

Luckily it's way different these days, the teachers of the 80s, and even 90s, are a distant memory and kids don't have to put up with that kind of abuse anymore. It's probably swung the other way now in that teachers are to soft, there must be some sort of middle ground in between abuse and neglect.

Candie wrote: »

If I hadn't had an exceptional maths teacher at second level, my life would be very different now, but I don't think I'll ever be confident about math even so.

Teachers who bully, or who just can't teach, need to be much more sackable.

I always struggled, from primary school onwards, so not 100% down to teachers and was finally tested for dyscalculia which was a relief in end.

Took me a long time to learn to count, where as I was already reading books beyond my age range in primary school.

Used to be given a page with the times tables for say 3x tables on it when my parents went to mass. They said I needed to learn them by the time they got back.
I never could remember past 3x5 or so and used to get a hiding.

If you showed me the thing I needed to do, say adding/dividing fractions I could eventually do it for about an hour or two after a tutor showing me (having spent 30mins showing me), then when I got home, even with my notes I just could not do it.
I just can not retain the information, and in some cases I can not even comprehend it.

I got A's in all GCSE classes except Maths, I had great memory for history etc so it really is just that section I can not retain. So why was a stupid **** as my family would say.

Happened to go to a grammar school, who refused to let me do the foundation paper for GCSE as "we do not have students like that here".

In secondary yr4 I had a horrible, horrible teacher for maths, who moved my table out from the "clusters" of other students and up the front, I mean right beside the blackboard.
Made me answer questions she knew I could never get, and the class literally laughed at me. I think I had the same experience as you Candie.

They eventually removed me from my math classes in the school "there is no point as you can not keep up" and got me a special needs tutor twice a week.
There was one other girl in my "class" and she was better at maths, and this tutor used to say "look at ****, they can even do this".
My classmates thought I was stupid, needing to be pulled from normal classes and left me very isolated for those 7 years.

On my second attempt at my GCSE maths, I woke up the night before, sick, coming out both ends , went to do my exam, almost fainted/fever, was brought to the sick bay/nurse room.
While I wanted to crawl into my bed and die from this stomach bug, I got the vice principle saying I was faking this to get out my exam. While I literally was throwing in a bucket in front of her.
I said phone my parents/sibling and get me home, they refused, gave me back my exam paper and told me I had to finish it before I left.
The fact they were so cold to anyone being sick was a joke.

I knew if I failed maths (which I had done 3 times already) I would never get into Uni, so my parents paid for private tutor once a week, she made the school let me take a foundation paper, and 3rd time lucky I got there.

Scarred me, those maths teachers, it really knocked my confidence and I am only slowly gaining it back.

Edit: I feel I had a lot of fear beaten into me and humiliation bout maths, but it only added to the fact I already had a problem.
I don't think the kindest teachers could have helped me do maths above a level I can today - but I would not feel so shameful of it.

BabyE wrote: »

The hard thing about maths is its so hard to know where to start to improve yourself.
...
But yeah with a language you easily know the steps needed to become good at it, but with maths there isn't or doesn't seem to be a logical sequence to build upon

khanacademy.org has got a great free online maths curriculum. It's much less daunting than a "formal" classroom environment, and you can take as much (or as little) time as you need in each area.

ScumLord wrote: »

I think these days they have come up with effective ways of teaching people that have problems. There's more than one way to skin a cat and thankfully we're moving away from the idea that everything has to be done a certain way. There probably is an alternative way of thinking of mathematical problems that suits the way your brain works.

I would not mind going to a tutor again in a few years to get strategies that will suit my brain, as you put it.
I use some basic maths from day to day, and because I do use that select few math skills repetitively then I would feel more confident in trying to learn more about them in a more relax environment. But currently my skills are a joke and should be far better.

ScumLord wrote: »

Just as an example of how there are different routes to the same conclusion, your brain is computing complex physics on the fly, constantly. Now, it's probably not solving equations as we know it in maths and is using the shortcut of experience to come up with correct answers. But it's still getting it right or close enough.

Most people don't even read phonetically the way they were taught, we actually just remember the shapes of thousands of words and associate the shape to the sound. The brain is a short cut machine, once you find a shortcut that appeases your brain it will start flinging out answers without a second thought. With practice.

Funny you mention physics because I did manage to scrape an A for that, somehow I could grasp it a bit more than math class (not that I found it easy though it was a struggle).

I hope you are right and I can just find a click into place moment

ScumLord wrote: »

Just as an example of how there are different routes to the same conclusion, your brain is computing complex physics on the fly, constantly. Now, it's probably not solving equations as we know it in maths and is using the shortcut of experience to come up with correct answers. But it's still getting it right or close enough.

Most people don't even read phonetically the way they were taught, we actually just remember the shapes of thousands of words and associate the shape to the sound. The brain is a short cut machine, once you find a shortcut that appeases your brain it will start flinging out answers without a second thought. With practice.

I think it was Thomas Aquinas (or maybe Augustine) who was the first person who could read without moving his lips and saying the words out loud.

ScumLord wrote: »

That's certainly true, I grew up in the 80s when it was acceptable for a teacher to beat, humiliate and belittle kids. The headmaster of my school when I was growing up certainly ruined education for me. If you didn't fit into his idea of normal then you were ostracised, beat and humiliated into doing as you were told.

If I had the interest I have in learning now back then, I think I'd have done much better in school and be a very different person.

I dropped out of college at 20. I went back in my 30's and did 2 degrees (Philosophy & Maths) and a masters (Business). I've just finished a HDip (computing). All but the HDIp were done whilst I was working full time. I'm going back for another course this September. Studying has turned into a hobby for me. I'd recommend doing a part time course. I found it a great distraction from a dull job and it's also helped greatly with my confidence.

Do we call people who are on the autistic spectrum thick because their social skills may not be as good? Hardly: some of the greatest scientists were on the autistic spectrum.

Intelligence is multi-faceted. Just because you don't excel in one area doesn't mean you do not in another.

Ficheall wrote: »

Apologies for delay, folks. Had wandered into uni and got distracted.

Permabear and Winterlong are correct, though either I have caused some confusion by not specifying that the second person was saying that the number on his OWN hat was 15, or Winterlong has chosen the peculiar route of naming the second person A, the first person B, and the third person C. Not that there's anything incorrect in that, it's just unusual...

A man looking at the other two numbers knows that his number is either the sum of those two numbers, or the difference between the two numbers. If the difference between the two numbers is 0, he knows his own number must be the sum (because 0 isn't an option).
Therefore, we know that the first man did not see two numbers which were the same; ie. the second and third person's numbers were not the same.
The second person, knowing that his number was not the same as third person's, and seeing that the first person had 10 and the third person 5, would know that his number was 15.
That is how the second person knows the number on his hat.

More importantly, since we know that the second person can work out the number on his hat from what he sees, we can work out that 10 and 5 are the only numbers which would enable him to do so. No other combination of numbers would enable him to decide whether his number was the sum or the difference of the other two.

This all relies on these men (or at least, the first two) being good logicians. If any of them were "weak at maths" or "thick", then the problem would be unsolvable.


Unrelated:
I give you three random numbers; X, Y and Z.
I tell you (truthfully!) that X is bigger than Y.
What are the chances of Z being bigger than X?

I got this far, but couldn't get any further. As to the OP, is of course not too succinct an answer?