(no subject)

[jeshyr]

Biggest thing I seem to learn when working out physics problems - I still get the physics part right, then screw up the basic arithmetic bits like I did in high school in the 1980/1990s... Some things never change??

Writing is hard so mostly I am just doing the problems mentally as I go through the book, but it's easy to convince yourself you knew how to do it when you can look at the answers so every so often making myself work one out on paper.

I managed to forget a minus sign and wrongly solve 100 − 300, but I did the university physics right. This is why I almost failed year 12 math - I could do the hard bits but I did them without paying enough attention to the little shit

Comments

[dragonreading]

I didn't bother trying to do Maths in HSC. Knew I wouldn't pass. It really bugged me that all these interesting science subjects, well, chem and physics, needed a bit of a maths brain. Maths = brain freeze.

[niqaeli]

...the anon comment was me, how did I end up logged out IDEK.

I have similar issues; I'm in the middle of getting assessed for a learning disability and/or ADD/ADHD. It's something I've lived with my whole life; my childhood was a litany of 'be more careful!'

I got through Calc 3 with an A but it was hard as hell -- not the math, that was a challenge but a fun one. The difficult was fighting with my brain to get correct answers was the difficult part; thank god for partial credit assigned based on whether you were working the problem overall correctly even if you'd introduced wrong numbers or screwed up an operation.

[dragonsally]

Huh, the dragonreading is ME. How the hell I got logged into the account I rarely use is beyond me.

[acelightning]

i am utterly incapable of even simple arithmetic - i quite literally have to count on my fingers. but i'm equally incapable of comprehending mathematical principles. i started college as a physics major, but as soon as we started needing calculus, i lost it. i took basic calculus three times, with three different teachers, using three different textbooks - one of them was even "calculus for liberal-arts students". i failed all three courses miserably. i even made myself a little cheat-sheet for the midterm... and even when i cheated, i failed.

this is why my degree is in English Lit.

[jesse_the_k]

I used to be quite adept with numbers: could do arithmetic in my head; could look at items scattered on the floor and know how many there were without counting; did well with trigonometry when I was using it as a surveyor.

Then the damn disease (ME? Fibro? Syndrome?) hit and my math skills went poof! Also my music skills: I used to be able to sing perfect intervals, now I can barely tell which pitch is higher.

Which is to say YAY you're able to understand some of the physics! I particularly enjoy anything by Phyllis & Phillip Morrison -- The Ring of Truth is nifty -- they're serious scientists, and they write for the general audience. That book accompanies a 1980s TV series about history of science; don't know if it's available on DVD yet.

[sqbr]

Were it not for getting points for working, I would never have passed my maths degree (by the time I got to my Phd I'd specialised to an area with very little arithmetic). I'm probably better at arithmetic than your average person on the street but I'm pretty terrible for someone who used to do maths for a living. I can't even blame the cfs, though it certainly doesn't help!

The way I see it, we're just on such a high intellectual plane that such petty concerns are beneath our notice ;)