write about how you learned and thought about math in the course of your schooling.?

Answer 1

I started learning about math before I started kindergarden, and math has been a part of my life ever since. I don't think a waking hour passes that I don't think about math in some manner: money, time, distance, number, direction, logic, etc. It's pretty hard to escape math, you'd better learn to deal with it.

Answer 2

The private school I attended in high school really had a bad math department. Very strong in all the language arts.

Then I wasn't particularly adept at it. Algebra was easy for me and even plane geometry was difficult. Me and spatial relationships just never did well.

I went to Cornell hoping to become a doctor. I flunked chemistry because though I knew how to solve the problems I always got the numerical issues wrong!

I still have a very strong interest in science - life sciences and evolution. What I learn there from Scientific American and Discover magazines and books I read don't require great mathematical skills. I may add that I am 75 yrs old now and still learning. Maybe math skills are still in my future!

Answer 3

Oh this is a fun question. I actually never did think of math that much when I was young. I got it fairly well early on, but I had some really bad teachers for elementary school, and my third grade teacher actually told my mother and I that I had peaked in math. Needless to say, that wasn't a confidence boost.

But truth be told I was difficult to get to sit still when I was a kid, and when I got older and calmed down a bit, I actually improved dramatically (in everything, but particularly in math), and in 5th grade they skipped me ahead to 6th grade math. I stayed a year ahead all the way through high school, which let me take both AP Statistics and AP Calculus, and this got me thinking about studying math in college. When I was in college I pursued math vehemently, and I even ended up publishing research in mathematics (a far cry from "peaking" yes? :)). Now I'm in graduate school for math, and getting ready to take my qualifying exams next week. So I guess now I think about math constantly as it's going to be my career.

Answer 4

Excellent question!
Had a fantastic teacher (Mr. Griesshaber) that helped us see it wasn't about numbers but about a way of thinking.
It is about learning priorities, consider simple division:

You have one number to divide into another.
Neither number is really important to you.
What is important is the solution determined from the two numbers.
To get that this number works with that one... and goes below.
One important number is found and goes on top.
This process continues until you worked out the top number.

Life's problems are rarely about this and that alone.
They are all interconnected and we have to work this situation with that one to determine what is most important to us. If we are willing to work out the equation we can find the answers we seek.

That was simple division, imagine what he had to say about geometry and algebra, and calculus, and quantum physics.

Answer 5

I learned alot but it always remained my worst subject.