Why's math hard for most people even though it's just patterns?

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Why's math hard for most people even though it's just patterns? Anonymous Sun Sep 27 18:25:18 2020 No.12168903 [Reply] [Original]

>>	Anonymous Sun Sep 27 18:27:53 2020 No.12168912 OOOOOOOOF FUCKK! I LOVE ABIGAIL SHAPIRO'S MILKERS!!!!!!!!!!!!

>>	Anonymous Sun Sep 27 18:37:41 2020 No.12168949 >that nose >these Milkers ... man sometimes I hate not being oblivious to these things. Knowledge can be a curse and a great burden, it seems.

Anonymous Sun Sep 27 20:21:30 2020 No.12169205

>>12168903
I'm generally terrible at math. In high school I had absolutely no interest in it. With trigonometry for instance, I didn't get it at all at least partly because it seemed completely useless and boring. When I went into college I had an instructor who was good at explaining shit and I finally somewhat understood trig. So in my opinion, many people have trouble with math due the way it's taught and the skills of the teachers. And of course some people are probably just naturally talented with math and logical thinking.

>>	Anonymous Sun Sep 27 20:39:32 2020 No.12169249 >>12168903 in general I think coffee is alright for you in moderation

>>	Anonymous Sun Sep 27 21:26:41 2020 No.12169340 >>12168903 they don't teach how to rediscover the patterns, just to memorize them. The curiosity is castrated

Anonymous Sun Sep 27 21:40:17 2020 No.12169390

>>12168903
If you have never encountered mathematics that hasn't given you pause, and think it's completely reducible to pattern recognition without *context* then you're doing trivial mathematics.
Covering space theory isn't "just patterns" easily discoverable by the eye.

>>	Anonymous Sun Sep 27 22:00:38 2020 No.12169440 >>12168903 They're clamped at birth.

>>	Anonymous Sun Sep 27 22:49:28 2020 No.12169542 >>12169205 Agreed. In college I had no real interest in math until differential equations. Math can be very interesting, you just need to find the right fields for you. And once you're invested in something, the chances of you succeeding in it go up

>>	Anonymous Sun Sep 27 23:29:53 2020 No.12169612 >>12168903 those boobs...

>>	Anonymous Sun Sep 27 23:30:53 2020 No.12169617 >>12169612 those aren't boobs, those are milkers

>>	Anonymous Sun Sep 27 23:42:59 2020 No.12169637 >>12168903 Because some things require a fixed amount of logical steps that can't be reduced. There are shortcuts for some things, but not all things.

>>	Anonymous Sun Sep 27 23:52:54 2020 No.12169652 >>12169617 those aren't just milkers, those are Khazar Milkers (tm)

Anonymous Sun Sep 27 23:58:54 2020 No.12169664

Because it seems some people are bad at patterns.
I like mathematics but I get filtered by any undergrad textbook before long, usually at the excercises but also often when trying to follow an argument where some algebraic transformations are not immediately evident.
I noticed I'm bad at patterns because I also cannot read a Go (or weiqi) book and understand very well why some or other group is dead/alive.

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 00:04:03 2020 No.12169678 >>12168903 Faulty pattern recognition

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 00:10:02 2020 No.12169693 >>12168903 Public education doesnt prepare students for University mathematics, its an inappropriate place for mathematics as well. Realistically private schools are the only proper preparation for Mathematics at a University level.

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 00:10:55 2020 No.12169695 >>12169340 and how do you suggest to rediscover, as opposed to remember and in fact avoid to remember to circumvent contradiction...hm? starting with arythmetics

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 00:18:45 2020 No.12169718 >>12168903 normies have a lot of filters, mental gymnastics, emotional thinking, sheep mentality

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 00:22:32 2020 No.12169727 >>12169542 Exactly, no interest until i hit calculus

Anonymous Mon Sep 28 00:25:25 2020 No.12169736

>>12168903
Because:
The teachers are spergs who won't tell you (or often even know) applications for what you're doing, or even the underlying theory from axioms up
It's highly abstract (which it doesn't need to be, purely, but, again, it's taught by spergs who make it autistically disconnected from the broader world)
It's taught with as little variety as possible (memey obsession with solving integrals and transformations in algebra, to the exclusion of all the other parts of math)
We're not taught what the open problems are, so it doesn't feel like something we can make progress in. It has no allure. The lack of teaching of applications makes this bad too, since we don't learn why pushing the frontiers in math is worth doing.
We're not taught proof
We're not taught mathematics as part of history, or as part of cultural history (niggas not be telling me that the Egyptians represented fractions in the same way as they laid they temples out, which is the same as a wadi coming off the Nile smdh)
We're not taught bits of math in the context of math as a whole
We're not taught the proof behind what we're doing
Mathematicians are fiends for abstraction, but teaching is only partly about abstraction. It's also about breaking things down and *then* building up to the abstracted stuff. Mathematicians, in my experience, almost always go too abstract and skip infinity steps. They also speed through their working, skipping too many steps (because to them it's obviously, and they're also spergs who can't empathise), to a room of uncomprehending undergrads.

Basically it's the hardest subject to teach that attracts the worst teachers. It's a real combo of a subject sculpted by autism and abstraction being taught by autistic abstractors to normalfags like myself who are interested in abstraction and autistic tunnels, but also like their own everyday experience, and everything in between. And who really need that as a hook.

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 00:26:32 2020 No.12169739 >>12168903 Her boobs are big. Her hips are nice. She is hot.

Anonymous Mon Sep 28 00:29:29 2020 No.12169741
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>>12168903
>Why is music hard for most people even though its just patterns
>why is chemistry hard for most people even though its just patterns
>why is quantum physics hard for most people even though its just patterns

Dumb concept for a thread. You're dumb and not even good at math yourself.

Anonymous Mon Sep 28 00:31:45 2020 No.12169747

>>12169736
To finish this post, because I got cut off by the character limit:
Mathematics can be fascinating but I needed to learn it from the context of things that interested me, before I got into it. My advice to teachers (which I have never seen them do in any subject) would be to *find out what your students are interested in*. I tutor high school math and I've taken my student in the span of like three months from not knowing how to multiply a fraction to doing his final year math exam questions at the highest level of math offered. It's not a difficult subject. You just need to learn what your student is interested in, what their goals are, and then link the math to that. If you haven't learned about the hydrodynamics and pigment patterns of fish in order to explain mathematical concepts to a 14 year old, you're not a real math teacher. Sorry not sorry.

>>12169741
The answer to all those is "shit teaching". As to why the teaching is shit and how to un-shit it, idk.

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 00:32:42 2020 No.12169751 >>12168903 God I'd love to suck on those milkers for hours on end.

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 01:17:04 2020 No.12169865 Damn there are a lot of simps in here

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 01:49:19 2020 No.12169933 >>12169695 Not them, but teaching the history of math, including proofs.

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 02:22:37 2020 No.12170014 File: 180 KB, 522x501, 1586931965479.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] This thread is now dedicated to Kosher milk

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 02:25:09 2020 No.12170018 >>12168903 Its because math is gay as fuck. We are constantly using math unconciously and only autistic wagies serving non beef at mcds living with their moms with a phd use math beyond basic algebra.

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 03:12:18 2020 No.12170134 >>12170018 >math is gay as fuck Only sometimes. Open problems aren't gay.

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 03:15:40 2020 No.12170149 >>12170134 Im an open problem. So im straight then?

Anonymous Mon Sep 28 05:56:48 2020 No.12170416

>>12168903
Due to its formalism and rigour. Reading math is like reading musical notation: the older you are, the harder it gets to learn and comprehend. That is why children should be taught rigourus math (i.e. reading, writing and thinking), from the first day in school.

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 05:57:05 2020 No.12170418 >>12170149 As an arrow.

Anonymous Mon Sep 28 05:58:09 2020 No.12170420

>>12170416
>That is why children should be taught rigourus math (i.e. reading, writing and thinking), from the first day in school.
Highly based, and highly true, but I'm not convinced mathematical notation is super hard to learn. I think it's mainly an issue of motivation. (As is, really, learning musical notation.) But children have an edge, as with all things to do with basic tasks and memorisation.

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 06:25:47 2020 No.12170471 >>12169205 Moral of the story? Don't rely on teachers to learn, they suck 99% of the time.

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 06:47:52 2020 No.12170511 i am pretty sure that i have never seen anyone become a math teacher out of passion for teaching math. it's pretty much a dead end job for many so they don't bother too much with it

Anonymous Mon Sep 28 07:24:57 2020 No.12170576

>>12168903
>Why's math hard for most people even though it's just patterns?
because math is not taught in that way. people are bullshitted into thinking that maths is some kind of ethereal divine subject that you can understand only if you visualize the Fourier transform in your head perfectly. in reality maths, just like ANY other thing, is the recognition and application of patters.
if you do enough integrals you will be able to almost evaluate them at first sight and intuitively know which technique could work better, that's why professor solve exercise in such an effortless way; they don't really apply the theory each time, they just turn on the automatic pilot

Anonymous Mon Sep 28 08:56:25 2020 No.12170759

>>12169340
which is why i don't study math. i just think about patterns and try to derive formulas for them. you can derive many things on your own if you have a lot of free time. problem is of course you already know the answers for many of them but still it can be fun.

Anonymous Mon Sep 28 09:00:12 2020 No.12170765

>>12169693
There is not enough time to truly learn and understand all the concepts for most people, if you are going through a typical school program. It is too fast paced for deep understanding. It may take weeks or months to truly "get" some key concepts but nobody is going to give you that much time. So most students don't truly learn anything, they just memorize homework patterns.

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 09:01:18 2020 No.12170766 >>12169736 tl;dr: there is not enough time in a typical program to cover most of that. you'd need a private teacher and years and years of dedicated studying.

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 09:09:30 2020 No.12170784 >>12169741 music is cancer, even if you're asian and train from child you most likely won't be able to turn it into a career, it's fucking proprietary software algorithms and marketing

Anonymous Mon Sep 28 09:14:44 2020 No.12170799

>>12170766
Cope, frankly.
There's easily enough time to get students addicted.
I took a 14 year old who couldn't multiply fractions together and got him doing A level highers math after 5hrs of tutoring a week for about a month.
Either I'm the greatest teacher ever or math teachers (and teachers generally) just suck and put in no effort, and just follow memes rather than thinking logically about how to get things into the student's head.
My respect for the teaching profession has plummeted the more experience I've gained with it.
As I said, I'm either a gigagenius, or these people suck.

Anonymous Mon Sep 28 09:31:43 2020 No.12170836

>>12170799

Teaching and tutoring are very different animals. With tutoring, it's generally 1-to-1 with a kid who actually wants to learn (or at least whose parents are forcing them to learn). Teachers on the other hand often have to babysit classes with 30+ disruptive pupils with no interest in learning anything and who are only there because the law mandates that they attend school until they're 16. On top of that, they have to do other stuff like being a form teacher and dealing with squabbles between pupils. I can see how it could easily become a soul-crushing job.

Anonymous Mon Sep 28 09:39:00 2020 No.12170847

>>12170836
Well, I can take pity on them if I agree that I'm a borderline genius.
But my pupil didn't like math to start with.
And the principles I independently developed in like 5 minutes could easily be scaled up to classrooms.
You know, I've never been asked by someone in a teaching position what I'm interested in.
And that was the first thing I asked my student.
Because obviously if you want to lure someone into being interested in your field you have to teach it in terms of things they're interested in.
You have to know their aims as well, which I also made sure to find out. And then link the subject to that.
I don't think I've ever had a person in a teaching position do that for me either. Including tutors.
So, I guess I'm borderline a genius, because otherwise all these people are borderline retarded.

Anonymous Mon Sep 28 09:43:03 2020 No.12170856

>>12170847
>You have to know their aims as well, which I also made sure to find out. And then link the subject to that.

You can't do this when you're teaching five different classes per day with 30+ students in them. Teachers have a syllabus and a schedule to which they must teach and there's nowhere near enough time to tailor their classes to individual pupils. You are not a genius, you just have the luxury of teaching 1 pupil at a time.

Anonymous Mon Sep 28 09:47:36 2020 No.12170861

>>12170856
>You can't do this when you're teaching five different classes per day with 30+ students in them.
It's called a fucking poll. You explain that you want to teach in terms of things they're interested by and you get them to write down things that they're interested by, with the assumption that they can change their minds. Then you try to include everyone, and go with things that are common interests amongst many of the students. Hell, even work it in to their presentations and assignments to make some things about the intersection of math with the things they're interested in, and some with things their classmates are interested in, so they can form a more cohesive group.
>Teachers have a syllabus and a schedule to which they must teach
I taught to a syllabus. My ass would have been fired if I didn't keep up a proper pace.
Are you a teacher or something?

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 09:50:09 2020 No.12170868 >>12170856 Like, why are you defending manifestly bad practices that consistently alienate students and cause poor retention, and thus poor results? What's your dog in this?

Anonymous Mon Sep 28 09:57:07 2020 No.12170883

>>12170868
Defending is not the same as pointing out defects in the system, retard.

Would've expected more from a self-claimed genius. Oh wait, "self-claimed".. that explains it.

No one's saying the current teaching system is great so get off your high horse. It just means that you had more benefits with this student than a standard teacher does with a standard class. Have a solution? Go ahead and make it happen then instead of criticizing others

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 09:58:07 2020 No.12170884 >>12170799 lol you just proved my point. now try teaching a class of 30 and see your genius getting diminished. of course private tutoring works quicker and better.

Anonymous Mon Sep 28 09:58:48 2020 No.12170886

>>12170861
>I taught to a syllabus
Yeah, and YOU TAUGHT TO 1 PUPIL AT A TIME. That's the key difference.
>Are you a teacher or something?
No. I have a maths degree and teaching is the one job I always had zero interest in doing.

>>12170868
I'm defending the teachers, not the system. I'm sure there a plenty of teachers who could teach just as well as this >>12170847 "borderline genius", but are given an impossible job with enormous class sizes.

Anonymous Mon Sep 28 10:05:41 2020 No.12170904

>>12170883
>>12170884
>>12170886
Nerve: hit.

I taught Australian cultural history to a classroom full of black primary schoolers in China and had them intrigued to the point where their teacher came up to me afterwards and asked for my slides.

The problem is partly the leadership, sure. I don't dispute that. And it's partially me for not singlehandedly changing education. But I'm glad you agree that I'm that important.

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 11:08:17 2020 No.12171110 >>12170904 Nerve hasn't been hit but you're free to think what you want. Good that you have that much self-importance, don't go wasting it and improve the world around you then.

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 11:12:33 2020 No.12171127 >>12168903 Because nobody teaches it the proper way, and students who don't see any point on it have no reason to practice.

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 12:00:15 2020 No.12171260 how can i learn to love math, is there a concept or a lecture or something that will help me want to learn math at a higher level?

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 12:05:55 2020 No.12171279 >>12168903 because it's useless patterns, it doesn't get you anything, it's just calculations for calculations sake so only autistic people who live in their heads care to learn it

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 12:06:57 2020 No.12171280 >>12171260 yes, getting a math tutor with very big tits

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 12:09:05 2020 No.12171282 >>12171280 God I wish I had a brainstacey to teach me things

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 14:48:38 2020 No.12171863 >>12168903 >even though it's just patterns You must be 18 to post here

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 15:47:08 2020 No.12172121 >>12171863 post one (1) math that is not a pattern

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 15:49:25 2020 No.12172125 >>12169751 I came to express a similar sentiment.

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 15:51:29 2020 No.12172133 >>12170784 Get yourself checked for aspergers bud

Anonymous Mon Sep 28 15:53:01 2020 No.12172137

>>12172121
That's not the point, what do you mean it's "just a pattern"? A pattern is not something with a fixed difficulty. Do you know what IQ is? Are you not aware of people's difference in ability to see "patterns" or are you doing this on purpose for (you)'s?

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 15:58:24 2020 No.12172149 File: 29 KB, 483x527, 1599839522180.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>12168903 shitty teachers, lack of good mentors and computational irreducibility coupled with finite/limited computational resources

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 16:06:22 2020 No.12172174 Because most people don't take interest in things that are boring and ignore them, unlike people with aspergers that cannot relate to others and become obsessed with one particular boring topic

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 16:09:53 2020 No.12172184 >>12168903 Most people aren't autistic enough to care about memorizing hundreds of methods just to turn some numbers into other numbers

Anonymous Mon Sep 28 16:21:02 2020 No.12172219

>>12172133
i have it but good luck becoming a musicfag regardless
i took this course and he only said some very basic stuff and then told you to experiment, it's like telling an incel to just be himself
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xib5iL0Frks
the musicfags on >>>/vg/agdg are even more delusional than the game devs, their music doesn't sound good at all, and there are countless failed soundcloud rappers etc

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 16:27:25 2020 No.12172244 try playing in an orchester for a living in some non-anglosphere country like sweden good luck lmao

Anonymous Mon Sep 28 16:44:37 2020 No.12172304

>>12172219
Music isn't a means to a career it's something that is enjoyed. I mean seriously could you be more disconnected? I understand modern popular music and people that emulate that are less than interesting, but to not even appreciate any kind of music unless it is equated to some sort of financial success is absolutely retarded

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 16:46:41 2020 No.12172312 >>12172304 we're talking about learning things, it's delusional to enjoy it at a superficial level and to think you understand it, just because you watch numberphile videos doesn't mean you're good at math

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 16:47:56 2020 No.12172316 >>12172312 People well-versed in music theory aren't the ones making good music, I don't think you grasp what art is

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 16:48:16 2020 No.12172319 >>12172316 tips fedora >>>/mu/

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 16:53:03 2020 No.12172328 File: 21 KB, 680x382, 1592794440128.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>12172319 You're the fedora here buddy

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 16:56:46 2020 No.12172340 >>12172328 your responses don't make sense within the context of OP's question and >>12169741 and you're accusing others of being a sperg

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 17:07:49 2020 No.12172376 >>12169741 This. If someone thinks math is just generally easy, then they haven't even gotten into higher level stuff. I don't care what your IQ is, if you get off Mt. stupid you'll realize math is fundamentally more complex than any other discipline.

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 17:10:05 2020 No.12172385 >>12168903 HOOO MOMMA BIG FUCKIN HEBREW MILK JUGS I WANNA BURY MY FACE IN THEM AND FUCKIN DIE

Anonymous Mon Sep 28 17:10:08 2020 No.12172386

>>12169340
Exactly. I think I had literally one teacher who stopped to fully explain the significance of an equation to us, and it was the one time I "got" math. I do terribly when I'm forced to just memorize and go through the motions without an explanation, but once I understand the meaning behind the numberd, I'm golden.

Math is just about a thousand times easier to teach if you dumb it down to memorization and busy work, so that's what most teachers do.

Anonymous Mon Sep 28 17:25:35 2020 No.12172440

>>12171260
Get good at it. I started off as a biology major in community college. I tested for Algebra II on the entrance exam, but knew I was retarded at math so I signed up for Arithmetic. I started to fall in love with the subject because I got good at it and made sure I had no blind spots. Doing long division by hand and getting the answer right gave me a small dopamine rush like a micro dose of drugs. I got addicted. I ended up changing my major to math.

Anonymous Mon Sep 28 19:39:34 2020 No.12172958

>>12172440
Teachers don't receive nearly enough critique, and they also don't get trained to do the job properly. I feel about teachers the way a leftie feels about cops, excepts our views are actually accurate.
There's a very unearned aura of respect for teachers that they don't reflect in their conduct.

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 28 19:40:54 2020 No.12172964 >>12172440 Post above this meant for >>12172386

Anonymous Tue Sep 29 01:44:24 2020 No.12173755

>>12172386
Meaning is literally how memory works. If something is not meaningful to you, you will not remember it. Simple as.
The flipside is that if you find a way to make something meaningful, even, like, a 50 digit string of random digits, you can remember it. (I would, for example, if I wanted to do that, probably reduce the string to letters via the code of 1=a, 2=b... 9=i, 0=j, then memorise the string as a series of acronyms and words.)

Anonymous Tue Sep 29 01:46:01 2020 No.12173760

>>12172386
If a teacher is failing to make what you're doing meaningful, they're failing at putting it into your memory, and thus failing at their job. Otoh, you can also make it meaningful by doing something for a good reason and understanding why you're doing it.

>>	Anonymous Tue Sep 29 02:33:11 2020 No.12173844 La mamí

>>	Anonymous Tue Sep 29 02:38:31 2020 No.12173854 >>12169693 1st year uni maths is now what was taught in the last 2 years of school

>>	Anonymous Tue Sep 29 02:41:06 2020 No.12173860 >>12169693 >Public education doesnt prepare students for University mathematics I graduated 20 years ago and even then they taught first year math Maybe you shouldn't live in a shithole

>>	Anonymous Tue Sep 29 09:07:32 2020 No.12174521 File: 17 KB, 250x208, 15B8D284-DBDC-4C09-8CFC-9F29884E2C53.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>12168903

>>	Anonymous Tue Sep 29 14:08:52 2020 No.12175496 >>12173854 >>12173860 1st year uni math is not a math

>>	Anonymous Tue Sep 29 21:40:17 2020 No.12176800 >>12175496 >moving the goalposts and equivocation what should expect from the highest IQ board on 4chan

>>	Anonymous Wed Sep 30 00:06:37 2020 No.12176985 >>12168903 some things are just hard anon, that's the way it is. And how did we go 40 posts or some without mentioning how ugly her face is? Yes, I'd fuck her I'm not an aspie . Great set of cans but that face,,,

Anonymous Wed Sep 30 00:42:31 2020 No.12177033

>>12168903
define math?
math as in everything up high school included or "pure math" ?

i don't think it's hard (except pure) but rather people don't see what they can apply it to.
what i do think, concepts should be introduced in a more direct manner; and there's way too more geometry which just so happen to too heavily rely on memorization, if you don't want to discover it from scratch

>>12169205
trig is useful if you want to build something no matter how shitty it is

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/sci/ - Science & Math