people who "suck at math" are really just dumb, right?

Being good at math means you don’t have to study math until college

Rarely they're good at other subject matters in STEM fields. See students in social science, education, social work and ethnic studies. They're invariably bad at math and scored low on quantitative section of the SAT. But you know the woke types were saying even in mid 1990s that everyone is special and gifted.

I’d also say the converse, i.e., I’ve never met someone who is great at math and not generally smart and capable.

People in the social sciences are invariably bad at math? Not sure how you arrived at that conclusion. For some whom I consider good at math, there might be an issue of not being as good as mathematicians (perhaps in a variation of the way I believe Richard Feynman would say he didn’t know math that well compared to others).

And I’m assuming that you’re exempting those with education degrees but also substantial coursework in math, physics, cs. I know some teachers fitting that description who are at least as talented in quantitative areas as many, many people I know with stem degrees and what is often considered a reasonable demonstration of prowess in math.

Who gave you an up vote as if you stated something correctly?

At some universities, economics is taught in School of Business. At other universities, economics is taught in College of Arts & Sciences and is often in the same building as other social sciences.

Life is about applying skills. You so called math geniuses, how many of you can hit major league baseball pitching? It's nothing but applied mathematics. I recall after 2022 World Championship 5000m. Rojo stated penultimate lap split incorrectly. Happens. People make mistakes. That thread went on for five pages before any of you math geniuses caught the error. Be smart in the real world when it matters.

yes they are. many majors dont even have a single math course, many only 1 or 2 in statistics. Masths needs training like anything else, as such those students are bad at maths. On top students know they dont need math for those courses and as such there is preselection. people not talented in math will more likely chose courses where they dont need math. That you cant make that connection is crazy.

I always struggled with math in school. I decided I just wasn't smart enough to be any good at it. Then for some reason I was given a Wechsler and the result blew the "not smart enough" explanation away. I was more than smart enough so it was still sort of puzzling as to why math, especially algebra, was difficult. I sort of wished I was better at it because I'd heard of all these great jobs you could get if you were good at math.

Eventually I figured out that math just bored the snot out of me. The only things I ever wanted from any math class I was in was that it would end soon and there wouldn't be homework. Then I decided that any job that involved doing significant amounts of math were not great jobs and that someone as smart as I was supposed to be should be able to find a decent way to get through life without having to deal with stuff like algebra.

And there are some "math types" who are just annoying because they seem to think that because they're good at math it makes them superior to those who aren't. They aren't smart enough to consider that some intelligent people just aren't interested in math. One of my kids had a perfect score on the math section of the SAT and went to college planning to major in something involving math or science. When he got there he decided to major in sociology because he found it interesting and math not very interesting.

It depends on what you mean by "suck at math." If you can't comprehend basic algebra and geometry, even with hours of practice and tutoring, then odds are you just aren't very intelligent. However, the more complex the mathematic field gets, the more spatial reasoning abilities you need, which may not correlate exactly with general problem solving ability.

Nah, notwithstanding your long winded justification to make yourself feel better, it sounds more likely that you and your kid are just not as math smart as you seem to like to think.

Mathematically mature people are indeed superior and they have no problem understanding the largely orthogonal point that some people may not be interested in math, but we are talking about being good at it in this thread.

I really have no idea if I'd be good at math if I tried to be but my son and the perfect SAT score not being as good at math as I think he was? Hmm, that's an opinion, a subjective thing, and isn't math supposed to be able to demonstrate truth objectively? If so, why are you even commenting on my son's math abilities? What are you basing your idea that he mustn't be as good at math as an objective measure of mathematical ability shows?

I know that "many majors" do not. I also know that many -- perhaps even the vast majority -- of the people in those fields are fairly weak in math, and very weak compared to their counterparts in STEM fields.

But you said "invariably," and I thought of Amos Tversky, countless economists, and a number of others off the top of my head who are 99th percentile (or 99.x) in math.

And I really don't know what connection you think I'm missing.

Commenting on your son was gratuitous venting, so I withdraw that snark.

That said, broadly speaking, I don’t consider a perfect SAT score being particularly mathematically mature. Many more Asian kids can do it, and it is in good part indicative of dedication and practice. I find a small percentage of graduate students in highly technical fields like math, CS, physics, and EE to actually possess mathematical maturity that has more to do with reasoning skills (different from just being facile at *using* algebra, calculus, etc. in coursework).

Save some ladies for the rest of us dude.

It looks as though your view of "mathematical maturity" is setting the bar very high for what you consider "good at math," as with those on the board spitting venom about how awful 2:08 marathoners are.

Or are you pursuing a tangential topic after the SAT point came up?

Another example of this...

My brother didn't like highschool math, nor did he like his math teacher. I think he got a C+ in his senior year of highschool math. My brother is also brilliant, and the very next year he scored 99% in Math 100 (he found it interesting). He changed majors after every year of University and finished with a degree in Psych. In one summer, he completed 3 distance-ed courses in 11 days (marks weren't very good) because he needed them for his latest major switch.

I’m sure you’re good at math, but not understanding how to simplify “raw intelligence” vs “competency” without sounding like a long winded dork might be a weakness to consider.

In my experience and observation, math ability correlates with general intelligence more so than any other subject. There is a correlation among other subjects to IQ, but math really takes the cake comparatively. There is a reason the average IQ of math majors is about 130 and about 145 for people with PhDs in math. You genuinely have to have a high IQ to do it.

That being said, mathematical ability IS it's own thing that is not synonymous with general intelligence. I have known many people in my life who were at least moderately intelligent who could not do very, very basic math on their own, like Algebra 1 types stuff. I do find, however, that when I'm with my friends and friends of friends (almost every last one of us is an engineer or something related), our conversations are always heady and intellectual, even when we're discussing silly and pointless things. I rarely experience that with people in non-quantitative fields.

Now we have drifted to subjectivity again. Most people would consider someone with a perfect SAT math score "good at math." Maybe you have a higher standard and that's your business. But if we're really going to use being good or bad at math to identify intelligence we need a much better definition of terms.

To the original point of the thread, intelligence is not assessed by people who formally study it by being good or bad at any particular discipline. It's most commonly done with an IQ test, normally the Wechsler. If you ask someone who has some training in intelligence assessment to explain why someone with a Wechsler score of 145 (two standard deviations above the norm) or more is "bad" at a particular academic subject one answer you won't get is that s/he is dumb.

Any sort of judgement you make here based only on one variable that ignores motivation, interest, environment, etc., is terribly simplistic. Any teacher will tell you they've had students who seem to overachieve and others who underachieve.

Disagree. I don’t care about your motivation level, nor does the real world. It only cares about whether you can perform or not. This is true of everything including competency in math. If you can perform at a high level, you are good; if not, any distinction from those who are not “inherently good” is irrelevant in the professional world. (Family is different and introduces biases.)