Everybody seems to hate math, every kind of math Algebra, Trig, Any type somebody hears math they hate it. I use to be that person that hated math but my math experiences made me love math and understand it. Math is a subject that you have to build up, if your foundation is not good you won’t learn or understand math. I was blessed to be able to meet teachers that gave me a strong foundation so that I could continue to excel in math. I went from barely passing to get 90’s on my
For years, students are brought up and inspired by the adults in their lives. When thinking back on all the people that have helped me strive to be the person I am today, and the person I eventually want to be, I’m instantly reminded of all of the teachers that have left a mark on me. Specifically my eleventh grade algebra teacher, Mr. Hart. He showed me that there is nothing wrong with having a love of math. Ever since grade school I've enjoyed puzzles and numbers and the “ah ha” moment when it all finally came together, but anytime I tell someone I enjoy math, they look at me with a look of disgust. It seems to be known that math is supposed to me the “most hated subject” and I’d love to change the way students and even adults see it. Spending the majority of my life in the school systems I have seen that teachers have a societal responsibility to shape their students into who they will become in the real world, and that is what I am going to strive to achieve.
Since Elementary school, I’ve been in love with math and all that it offers. I get excited with the numbers, the letters, and the equations. It fascinates me how there’s so much depth and that there is always something new with math. Not until I reached high school did I realize that the reason I loved math so much was because it was Algebra. My sophomore year I discovered Geometry, and that is when the loathing began.
I experienced by middle and high school math classes not truly recognizing the intrinsic value of them and arrived at AP Calculus AB my junior year of high school holding the same apathy for them. The popular culture and ideology regarding mathematics is that unless a student is going to study engineering, s/he will never use trigonometry, algebra, or geometry. The actual subject matter didn’t matter, only the numerical stamp of progress and success did. I let myself get caught in that train of thinking, and quickly considered mathematics another obstacle I had to grudgingly hurdle to continue my studies.
Formulas, factoring, derivatives: math topics make many people cringe and are viewed difficult to endure when learning these boring concepts. On the other hand,
I hate Algebra 2. It does not make any sense to me. What is Algebra 2 all about? ¨More Functions, More Features¨ was the name of the first module. Why do I care if Michelle and Rashid love being on long bike rides and what the piecewise function is that estimates the distance they travel for each hour of their bike ride.
Mathematics is not for one type of person: not only for the nerdy and weird outcasts, not only for the white male, not only for those who are not targeted by the stereotypes prevalent in the field. Mathematics is not dry, nor boring, nor focused on inane solutions never to be used after the discovery. Mathematics is not what people think it is; it is not one field, one theme, one subject. Mathematics is everything. Look around, with clear eyes, and you will see the art of mathematics everywhere. Dr. Diana Gu, the founder of MTY Academy, an extremely successful institute in the Austin community, and long-time, inspirational professor at the Texas State University, looks at the world and sees numbers. She sees passion and dedication and motivation. She sees intensity and zeal and excitement. Explaining that mathematics is essential for everyone, she emphasizes an idea: innate skill matters little, while practice is what defines you.
I found not only Consumer Math but Geometry to be the two most difficult areas in which I struggled the most. In realizing this, I sought out the necessary help needed in better grasping the two different subjects of math. As I have later come to notice, my family often times does not understand me when I voice to them that I enjoy figuring complex equations out. Often times, they will ask me to solve a problem for them because not only do I enjoy it but I am able to figure it out with more ease than they are. When I was younger and even now, I will sit and figure things such as my bills and paychecks out to a penny. I use to have notebooks full of math figures that I would try to solve just for sheer entertainment along with a dozen or more Sudoku books that I have either worked on or completed. To me, Math is a way to relax when to most other people it is found to be a bit stressful. I love how Math allows you endless possibilities to continuing education. With the knowledge of numbers, you are able to obtain a job in a multitude of professions. Math opens the door to so much insight into ones personal as well as professional
There are an abundant amount of subjects that peak my interests, but mathematics will always be the one subject that intellectually excites me. At times, it is able to both challenge me to the point of frustration, but it later gives me excessive excitement and happiness for overcoming the challenge. Similarly, it is like a wave flooding in shore because it is at first harsh and difficult, but it gradually smoothes and simplifies. It is a subject that I can fully interact and manipulate it to the best possible way of understanding it, which I fondly love because I learn better hands-on. However, it was truly benevolent instructors, who increased my love in math and enlighten a new way of
Math was never difficult for me. In middle school , I would always be good in Math , the teachers would push me hard to do my work and understand math. I used to stay for tutoring to get better at math and to help other students out. When I would struggle with a problem , I would always work it out until I found my mistake or ask for help. In 8th grade , I moved to a new school and the teachers were different so I wouldn't ask for help or I wouldn't understand math but , I passed with a B which is weird. So I quit on 8th grade because there was no point. The teachers cared but I felt like I was a nerd and i felt different because I didn't know what was going on because everyone knew what was going on and i didn't. I felt stupid and I didn't
Math is all around us. Everywhere you go there is some sort of math involved consciously or subconsciously. Even though math is all around us, and everything we do involves math, I myself must say I dislike math. Research has shown there are many more people that dislike math compared to those who do like it. A survey done by a nonprofit organization named Change the Equation asked 1,000 middle school kids in 2010 whether they would prefer to eat broccoli or do one math problem, surprisingly more than half answered they would eat broccoli. Throughout the years, there have been many different strategies created on how to introduce and/or teach math to children.
Remember going into second grade and fearing those one minute division tests? I remember very clearly how afraid and intimidated I was. I panicked because I was scared that I was not going to get a good grade on it. To my surprise, I did not get a high score on it compared to my classmates. I was devastated because I had tried really hard on it. After that, I hated math until seventh grade. Math was my worst subject, and I acknowledge I was terrible at it. I hated it so much that after years of hating it, I developed a passion for math. After some years of practicing math, I fell in love with it. Entering middle school, Algebra was introduced. I loved Algebra because I was not only adding numbers, I was solving for certain variables at the
I loathe math. Numbers are extraordinarily dull. They don't have any depth. In high school, math felt irrelevant. When am I going to need logarithms? When am I going to say to myself “I sure am glad that I had to memorize the unit circle, I use that so often”? But as much as I detest numbers, they explain who we are. Numbers can’t lie, so who better to tell us who we are.
Math is a subject that I have struggled with for a very long time; it is something that I always set aside. Math is something that I never saw myself using in my future and I thought if I put it off it would just disappear. When I came to the University I had to take Math 100 and Math SAX, which, unfortunately set me back on finishing math quite a bit because I did not put in the effort as much as I should have, and the amount of work they gave, was quite an overload. I took those courses twice and was still not put into a Math course at the University. That is when I started to push math away, but I have realized I cannot put it off and math is definitely important and we do need to know the subject no matter where we go in life or regardless
Mathematics, like every creation of man, have evolved without really knowing how far you can get with them: the scope of the computer, physics, chemistry, algebra, all are evidence of this. Every aspect of our culture is based in some way or another in Mathematics: language, music, dance, art, sculpture, architecture, biology, daily life. All these areas of measurements and calculations are accurate. Even in nature, everything follows a precise pattern and a precise order: a flower, a shell, a butterfly, day and night, the seasons. All this makes mathematics essential for human life and they can not be limited only to a matter within the school curriculum; here lies the importance of teaching math in a pleasure, enjoyable and understandable way. Mathematics is an aid to the development of the child and should be seen as an aid to life and not as an obstacle in their lifes.
As a mathematics major, the concept that most people overlook is that I did not choose to study mathematics because I do well at it; I chose to study mathematics because it makes me smarter. In fact, all throughout junior high and high school I was in remedial mathematics classes and worse, I did not even place into a freshman year mathematics class in high school. I had to re-take 8th grade mathematics. However, something about mathematics excited me. Maybe it was the fact that mathematics never came easy to me and I wanted to prove to myself that not only could I pass mathematics classes, I could actually understand and excel at them. For me, mathematics is not about the arbitrary numbers, trivial solutions, meaningless formulas, or repetitive computation: it is about the progress of knowledge and human understanding.