I’m highschool student and computer science maniac. To get into good computer science studies I need to be good at math and I really sucks at math. Even on this easy tests in school for 1 exercise from 5 I have to spend my whole time and because of that I have terrible grades.
I would like to like math and enjoy it, but it’s not clear for me at all and boring af. Every minute of time which I spend on learning math sucks. At the same time I can spend whole my day by tinkering and reading about computer science. In computer science everything is clear for me. There’s a lot of great documentation, manual pages and resources.
In the case of math the most things which I find on internet are just ads of paid courses preparing for exam or other shit behind a paywalls. Still there’s a lot of content from which I can get knowledge but I don’t consider them to be exactly what I’m looking for. Maybe I should try resources in English language. At least I have school book for math which is not that bad.
I hate equations because when I’m doing them I ALWAYS make mistakes, I’m getting lost when I have to rewrite numbers multiple times.
I hate these stupid math language and symbols which is saying nothing to me.
I hate my math teacher, because he just don’t care and I can’t get normal answer for my questions without nastiness.
When I learning something I have these hard moments but then finally I achieve my goal, I’m getting my reward and I’m happy. But when I’m learning math there’s no any reward, only punishments and bad grades.
I’m not idiot and I have the best grades in my class expect math where even complete idiots can be better than me.
I was thinking to maybe connect programming with math but I don’t know how. I know that for stuff like that Python or R are great but for right now I’m obsessed on C programming.
Sorry if this post is complete nonsense for you (like math for me). I can’t speak with sense as I don’t understand what is wrong with me or this math. I just wanted to let off steam. I really would like to enjoy math as it seems to be interesting topic. I was interested about it as kid but school completely destroyed my passion.
Do carpenters like hammers? Or do they just like completed projects? Hammers are pretty boring usually. Some may geek out about hammers, but that’ll be rare.
Math is also a tool. You can learn to use it well—without necessarily enjoying it—to accomplish things you do enjoy.
If you like programming, you could try to do project euler problems. They are little programming challenges with a mathy focus. You can do them in your own pace with any language and learn math on the way. It mostly won’t be the kind of math you need for your tests, but it will help you with basics and might also bring some fun back to math for you.
However, it won’t be easy. You might have to learn some basics first. And don’t hesitate to google the topics a lot to learn about them. After you solve a challenge, you get to see how others did it.
You could even do them on your phone, if you like Python.
Thank you!
Your problem might be that you are missing the fundamentals.
I’m not placing blame here, just trying to point out a problem that might be or not.
In high school math was always fun to me - because it was always logical and always followed the same rules. But without foundation it is just random things.
Here are some things that could be considered “basic” math tools to learn.Do you know your multiplication tables? Without thinking do you know all the answers?
Do you know which symbols you understand and which you don’t?
Do you know some formulas by heart? Like these: (a+b)^2=?
Do you know how to solve quadratic equations, cubic equations?For mistakes it is easier to avoid them when you do everything in steps.
Calculus and Matrix calculations can be really hard if it wasn’t broken down from the beginning.I can agree with you - I’m missing fundamentals and this is why I see that shit as completely random stuff. I think that these fundamentals were skipped during my education. Saying that math was fun and logical for you in highschool is depressing me. I don’t think that math is following the same rules.
- I don’t know full multiplication tables, but I can use calculator in school on test and on any exam.
- ^ ∨ I always have problem with understanding these symbols. I understand & and | symbols but when we’re speaking about these symbols ^ ∨ I’m always forgetting which is and and which is or. But as I understand & and | from programming these symbols lost any sense for me in math when had absolute value topic. We had some “clock method” which was about turning this symbols upside down to making this equations and I wasn’t understanding what is going on. So I understand most of the symbols but it’s hard for me to understand in which context they’re used if you know what I mean.
- That’s what I have to learn but I don’t want to.
- I know how to solve qubic equations, but I’m really slow at it. I didn’t have cubic equations at school.
Math in my school is COMPLETE CHAOS. I don’t see any logic in it, it’s just random shit for me. It would be better for me if I didn’t have to walk to this school and waste my time on that and instead just learning to exams on my own rules. I even don’t have time to get acquainted with the current topic and I hate something like “I have to know that topic for the next week”
- I only will say this from my viewpoint - knowing multiplication tables is kinda a must. Calculators are fine and dandy but you should be able to multiply or divide complex and not round numbers - without any outside help. You don’t need to do it all the time, but you do need to understand how is it done.
- those are logic symbols. These you actually have to sit down and learn. And more you use them more familiar they will become.
- These things going to be used all the time while solving equations. For me it was easier to learn them after I actually solved them myself. You can do (a+b)(a+b) then sum up everything at the end. (a+b)(a-b) and so on…
- slow is good. Speed comes with practice, if you understand them and can figure out the solution by doing it step by step slowly - and at the end you check your solution and adds up - you are good to go!
The biggest problem usually when someone don’t want to do something, while they have to. Whenever you are forced to learn, the process will be slow with suffering.
Schools should entice and lead and make you want to learn - but if this is missing, then you are on your own - and that’s not good. People don’t enjoy doing stuff that they suck at (hence I avoid Elden Ring like a plague).Unfortunately this is the “being adult” part. When you either keep suffering or try to work on your own attitude. If you can’t change the world - then you can change the way you interact with.
And By the title of this post, you are hoping to change it for the better. It will take time but I believe you can learn to love Math.Thank you for your suggestions! I will be working on improving myself! 😊
As I have free time from school I’ll try to learn math today :)
Good luck! :)
I think that these fundamentals were skipped during my education.
Yes, that happens way to often unfortunately. And since everything in math builds on earlier stuff, it’s very easy to completely get lost just because you missed a few things. The school system doesn’t tend to help (unless they offer extra courses), so you’ll have to teach yourself until you catch up. Thankfully there is lots of stuff online, like Khan academy. I’m sure you can do it, since you already love programming.
It would be better for me if I didn’t have to walk to this school and waste my time on that and instead just learning to exams on my own rules.
That’s probably true. Unfortunately, we’re stuck with this system for now. Good luck making the best of it. Take the good for your own goals and ignore the bad as best as you can.
Math is wonderful, but our system is bad, if you struggle with math, that doesn’t mean anything is wrong with you. Don’t let it affect your self esteem. Just try to learn the way that’s best for you. I hope you’ll find a way to enjoy math eventually. But if not, that’s okay too.
The universal international language about world, nature, universe… for people…
May I ask you why do you want to invest your life time into math exactly?
Is there any actual personal task to accomplish with math?
What do you want to actually do with math?
Why do find math interesting?
Why math of anything?- I really need it for my current and future education in school. Also I think that math would allow me to improve my computers skills much more and open doors for me into other studies.
- These fucking tests. Expect that I don’t see any tasks like this.
- I don’t know.
- Because it’s related to computer science and I love computer science. Computers are built on math, at the basics computers are just math. What I like about computers is that that I’m solving problems which I really want to solve and which are important for me. I’m just learning in practice.
I think 3blue1brown on YouTube does a tremendous job of showing the interesting side of mathematics. Mostly interesting problems, clear explanations and amazing visualizations! Check it out.
For now you might want to study math separately from programming. Later you’ll combine them more.
Numberphile on YouTube is all about showing the fun and creativity that real mathematicians experience in their work.
A rule says you can’t do something? Just make up a new rule that says you can and see what happens. That’s how a lot of progress is made in mathematics. Too bad school doesn’t teach it that way.
thx
In order of priority:
- Stop your thoughts from becoming a barrier. How? I tend to suggest acceptance and commitment therapy and, on top of that, mindfulness practices. Let me know if you want specific recommendations here. Note that other approaches can also work.
- Learn to learn. You can learn this in many ways. Just make sure it’s evidence-based. There’s Barbara Oakley’s texts, the book Make It Stick, and some techniques in the book Making Thinking Visible or more broadly in Harvard’s Project Zero.
- Learn what you’re missing and start there. I’m sure free solutions exist, but a paid one that I know of is ALEKS. It’s not cheap, but I know of a couple of home-schooled kids who swear by it.
- Prime your brain to learning. You can do it by training in relational frames. Let me know if you’re interested in this.
What are these therapies and relational frames? I hate these motivational books haha
It sounds like you’re skeptical of psychology as a discipline or popular psychology books as a genre. And you’re right to be so: there’s plenty of pseudoscience in the “motivational books” genre.
However, I’m not talking about pseudoscience. If you know about meta-analyses, you know they’re perhaps the most robust way of determining whether something is true or not. In some ways, meta-analyses are the best evidence humans have. So, are my recommendations backed by thousands of studies and hundreds of meta-analyses? Yes: http://bit.ly/ACTmetas
I hope you can appreciate that my recommendations stand on the solid ground of science. If you don’t see it that way, I’d love to have a conversation about that. However, I’ll assume that we agree.
So, you asked what I was recommending. What I’m recommending is basically learning how your brain works. If you know how to use it, you won’t be stopped by it. These therapies have figured out how cognition works and how your own thoughts can become impediments. They have also learned how to deal with those thoughts.
Here’s a couple of videos that might help:
I especially recommend the second video. It was recorded in an unusual school. The school is for the most intelligent students in the United States. And the speaker teaches the students how to make their brains their allies, and not their enemies.
I was thinking to maybe connect programming with math but I don’t know how.
Try reading about the computer science topics that basically are pure mathematics. Read about automata (very simple models for computers) or about computability theory (which asks what problems are literally impossible for computers to solve, even with unlimited time and memory). There won’t be too many numbers or equations involved in getting your feet wet with these topics.
Let’s say you have a keyboard with only three letters: ‘X’, ‘Y’, and ‘Z’. That’s our “alphabet”, it has just three letters in it. Let’s plug this keyboard into a monitor that’s really broken, actually all that works is one pixel that has four possible color options. We can have our machine start at white when you press the power button to turn it on, and when you hit black it shuts down. We could still teach a kid some basic programming ideas with this limited setup - If we’re on white and press ‘X’, change the color to green. If we’re on white and press ‘Y’, change the color to blue. Maybe pressing ‘Z’ from blue will get you back to white, but pressing ‘X’ will take you to black. Maybe some other rules too. This simple machine is called a finite automaton.
What “words” (strings) can we type in after powering on to shut the computer down? From what I’ve laid out so far, we power on to white, can press Y to go to blue and then X to go to black. “YX” is a string that works here. We could also do “YZYX” or “YZYZYX”. The set of all strings that will power down our machine from boot are called its “language”.
An automata theory question might ask if we can write a program on this machine that has both words “XYZ” and “XYX” in its language, but not “ZZZ”.
If you’ve tried read this and have trouble following, that’s because math is hard! (and totally not because I can’t explain for shit.) If you’ve tried to read this and don’t feel like it’s hopeless to learn, that’s probably because you’re not even seeing this as math at all. (Theoretical questions like this are absolutely math problems.) If you’ve read this and have already figured out an answer to the question I posed in the last paragraph, then your problem with learning math definitely isn’t that you’re hopelessly bad, so we’ll have to troubleshoot elsewhere.
If you learn these subjects you’ll eventually need the groundwork from more basic mathematics, but you’ll have some motivation for why they might be needed.
I started writing this intending to tag on a rant about how math being used as a gatekeeper in schooling poisons everyone’s idea of what math actually is and makes a ton of people wrongly feel hopeless, but this comment is long enough as it is.
It sounds like you are well on your way to becoming a great programmer, but I would caution you. Computer science formal isn’t about programming; it’s about the science of computation. You’ll be learning things like how to implement search and sort algorithms from first principle and then determining for the worst case scenario how many steps it takes that algorithm to achieve its goal. That is the math. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking CS makes you a good programmer and will net you a good job. As the joke goes “the only thing a degree in CS will prepare you for is graduate school”
Maybe in my future job I will not need math at all even with working computers. But I’ll have math and physics for sure on studies. Physics is much more interesting for me tbh
