I was really good at calculus, and enjoyed it. I ended up in medicine so I haven’t taken or done math in 10+ years. Now I find I am bad at math and even ‘struggle’ with simpler concepts. An individual can be both at different points in life. Also hate to break it to you but there is a 98% chance your surgeon is bad at math? yet doctors and surgeons are generally considered intelligent.
Queche wrote:
Oh, that's rich! wrote:
^ Same with lack of agreement between subject ("skills") and verb ("shows"). Or was that an attempt at sarcasm?
No, just a typo.
I know I shouldn’t do this, but I can’t resist. The subject “Poor math skills” in the context that you used it is singular, thus “shows” is in fact the correct verb form. You were correct the first time. Learn to stand your ground, son.
Bad Wigins wrote:
being "not good at math" is usually due to an inability to separate reason from emotion.
This is why women are underrepresented, even if it's not PC to say it. Who are soaps for? People whose reasoning process is inextricably tied to emotional cause and effect. This develops in early childhood, after which it's too late to change it.
Boys are more focused on the physical world and its inanimate objects, which have no emotions to cloud abstract reasoning.
No moran. Soaps were developed for advertising to people who tended to stay at home during the day while the other half of the family left the house to work. Many of the traditional long running soaps have been cancelled. The shows were just long never ending dramas with constant cliffhangers and not dissimilar to Star Trek or Star Wars series favored by math nerds.
Pompous Donkey wrote:
Queche wrote:
No, just a typo.
I know I shouldn’t do this, but I can’t resist. The subject “Poor math skills” in the context that you used it is singular, thus “shows” is in fact the correct verb form. You were correct the first time. Learn to stand your ground, son.
I can’t resist. Math is short for mathematics which is plural. But math sounds singular and in England is called maths instead of math. So, there is no right or wrong. Math could be considered singular or plural depending upon your English teacher.
Soaps, and any kind of drama series, are for people who focus their thoughts on social interactions. People who calculate who is going to react in what way to what someone did to someone else. This is not stupid, it's just not math.
Star Trek and Star Wars are gibberish that those who understand math (and physics) laugh at.
balanceboard4 wrote:
If schools were really able to teach students how to think then MIT wouldn't be special. Some say they learned how to think in college but they were given stuff to study and tested and eventually figured out something because they had to and weren't hand fed anymore. Is a professor offering that the struggle with the thesis might be because there's actually two main ideas instead of one, teaching or advising? The student at MIT isn't taught but advised.
I think I mostly agree with this. Structurally, schools set standards and help students achieve them. It is as much training as teaching, and mostly what gets learned is learned and not taught. With some important exceptions, of course.
However, I also think that a lot of how we think we pick up from those we spend a lot of time with. I'm not sure whether I think there are more important formative years for this, or whether how we think evolves as our thought partners change. Maybe a little of both. But at a school like MIT, you will (I would argue) find a larger percentage of that population who tends to re-examine more and think analytically more often. That's a claim I can't back up, but personal experience supports it. Still may not be a majority in any population, but if you spend time with more examples of thinking and rethinking differently, would you not become more likely to learn to do the same yourself when it was valuable? That seems comparable to how kids learn to be on time or keep their room clean--repeat experience that there's a benefit to doing so, regardless of whether it's regularly talked about or not. Maybe it's the same with putting the work in to try with something like math, that makes people think you're smart.
Letting the days go by. wrote:
Pompous Donkey wrote:
I know I shouldn’t do this, but I can’t resist. The subject “Poor math skills” in the context that you used it is singular, thus “shows” is in fact the correct verb form. You were correct the first time. Learn to stand your ground, son.
I can’t resist. Math is short for mathematics which is plural. But math sounds singular and in England is called maths instead of math. So, there is no right or wrong. Math could be considered singular or plural depending upon your English teacher.
Sorry Mr. Letting The Days Go By, but the word Mathematics is singular. It would be correct to say Mathematics is my favorite subject, and incorrect to say Mathematics are my favorite subject. Touché.
jackiemoon wrote:
Also, you misspelled the word moron.
Moran.
I used to be good at certain aspects of it. I got the highest scores (percentage) ever achieved in the statistics component of my degree, in the history of the degree (someone will have surpassed that now). The examination part of those modules. But that was before I became retarded. I sometimes think I come across as stupid intentionally and at other times it's non-intentional which should be a bit worrying. I feel like I shouldn't have to go back and correct any errors in my typing so I don't, which leads to my sentences being a huge mess of words and grammatically incorrect groupings. Maybe I should change that but I've been doing it for years.
I liked statistics but I hated mechanics. I liked pure maths. Maybe I should get a maths book but I wanted to take up photography or drawing, or go to a church. I suppose those things are not mutually exclusive.
Anyway, my answer to the question is that MOST people who are bad at mathematics are probably dumb, but not all of them. They could be highly intelligent in another region (e.g. languages).
American culture has a powerful thread of innumeracy that encourages young people to say "I suck at math," a self-fulfilling declaration. Most people are sufficiently intelligent to understand basic Calculus, but learning math requires effort and confidence that are antagonized in our society.
I bet most would be fine if they were taught it well from a young age.
Just a little anecdote for all who doubt the OP. I am currently a junior in high school, and taking AP Calc AB. All the juniors who are in a level of math below that, almost without exception, are some of the literal dumbest, least motivated people i’ve ever met in my entire life. It honestly makes me laugh. Math is absolutely a good way to predict intelligence at least in high school, and anybody saying otherwise knows moot.
Colin6_9_ wrote:
Just a little anecdote for all who doubt the OP. I am currently a junior in high school, and taking AP Calc AB. All the juniors who are in a level of math below that, almost without exception, are some of the literal dumbest, least motivated people i’ve ever met in my entire life. It honestly makes me laugh. Math is absolutely a good way to predict intelligence at least in high school, and anybody saying otherwise knows moot.
You know what else is a sign of idiocy? Speaking in absolutes based on anecdotal evidence when you are a junior in high school.
Colin6_9_ wrote:
Just a little anecdote for all who doubt the OP. I am currently a junior in high school, and taking AP Calc AB. All the juniors who are in a level of math below that, almost without exception, are some of the literal dumbest, least motivated people i’ve ever met in my entire life. It honestly makes me laugh. Math is absolutely a good way to predict intelligence at least in high school, and anybody saying otherwise knows moot.
Here's what you're doing. You're making a subjective judgement about people's intelligence based upon a subjective criteria that you've created that allows you to think of yourself as part of the superior group and you toss in a little kicker at the end that, in your mid, disqualifies other opinions. Do you really think you, a high school junior, know more about intelligence than people who have spent decades researching and studying the topic?
by letsrun standards anyone who scored below about 750 on SAT or GRE quantitative is not intelligent. Just like anyone slower than 4:03 mile/14:00 5K is not a decent runner. Oh and don't forget the Ivy League education, $400K annual income, and trophy wife.
Harambe wrote:
I've been saying this for months re the folks who don't understand nonlinear growth and risk on this board.
Get it out your system buddy. Pretty soon you will need to find a new cause to get your dopamine fix.
Colin6_9_ wrote:
least motivated people i’ve ever met in my entire life. It honestly makes me laugh. Math is absolutely a good way to predict intelligence at least in high school, and anybody saying otherwise knows moot.
Blimey.
Anyway, you’ve stumbled upon the rather common exception to the correlation between intelligence and mathematical ability: effort and motivation.
The good thing is that beyond very very basic math you can live a very productive and happy life. That is not true of things like reading, writing, reading comprehension, or interpersonal skills of communication.
Unless you chose certain professions, you will never need to know what x is.
Math proficiency, like so many other proficiencies, is trainable. Some people will have a talent for it and go on to deeper levels. Others will muddle through the minimum. It really is important for elementary kids to learn the multiplication table. Middle school, compound interest and the rule of 70 (or the rule of 100 ln 2). High school, geometric proof by descent that square root of 2 is irrational. That last one, almost everyone will forget the result, but the concept of the argument may remain. Calculus is trainable at the level of moving symbols around and producing the "right" answer. Understanding convergence as a concept tied to topology, that's more difficult. Running is a natural gait. Working up to a higher level of fitness, trainable like a horse. Reaching for top performance, more training, but also something extra.
toozy wrote:
Colin6_9_ wrote:
least motivated people i’ve ever met in my entire life. It honestly makes me laugh. Math is absolutely a good way to predict intelligence at least in high school, and anybody saying otherwise knows moot.
Blimey.
Anyway, you’ve stumbled upon the rather common exception to the correlation between intelligence and mathematical ability: effort and motivation.