I've never been particularly quant oriented...I failed Calculus my senior year of high school and barely made it through Trig my junior year. I got Bs in the handful of college math classes I took but none were particularly rigorous (mostly algebra) and they were all graded on curves.
One of my volunteer efforts is tutoring 2nd and 3rd graders, and I noticed that even at that level, some of them catch on quickly or seem to be naturally good at it, and some just....don't get it at all. At that age your brain is supposed to be a sponge. Because of my own weaknesses in the area I can easily identify the source of their struggles,and oftentimes it's the same things I used to suffer from: forgetting rules, getting lost in wordy word problems, being unable to mentally organize data efficiently, and struggling with questions that don't look specifically like the examples in which the concept was originally taught/lack of contextual awareness.
These kids aren't stupid at all; they easily remember details i provide in any of their other subjects-and 2 of them are in a gifted program-but they just can't think creatively/strategically enough to apply math concepts to rearranged questions, and I find myself having to constantly show them how to extrapolate a concept before attacking a question (I read a book called "how to solve it" by George Polya, which gives you a pretty good framework for training your brain to approach quantitative methods and apply them to unfamiliar questions). They seem to only know it superficially and mechanically-but not conceptually.
Is there a math gene? is it something that you just happen to be good at? if you struggle with it, can you eventually turn yourself into a quant jock through sheer practice? Feel free to share your own insights and experiences. My lack of real math aptitude has been one of my biggest confidence killers my entire life!
I think it's the same as for everything else (sports, music, languages,...), practice helps you improve but if you don't have the particular talent for it then you'll never master it.
How do all of those Asian kids keep getting perfect SAT scores? (forgive me if that was a stereotype).
Check out www.eliteacademy.com these types of schools turn them into quant machines. Is the key nonstop practice starting at a young age? Is it particular teaching methods? I could make some serious bank cracking the "formula", lol
It's all a question of practice. There is no math gene. As long as you do the work you will be fine with math.
One thing about math is that it's cumulative. If you struggle with a topic early on, it will come back to haunt you at the higher levels and disrupt your understanding of material you might otherwise know. It's important not to allow yourself to have any weaknesses. Teachers aren't doing kids any favors when they give out "partial credit" or allow kids to freelance on the "show all work" part.
Entirely agree, it's like organic chemistry. Don't have everything down at the start and you are in major trouble the next two semesters
If there is one, it's on the Y chromosome (kidding ladies!). I agree with above that it's just practice .
There probably is a gene, or a combination of genes that gives some people advantages in math. However, there are also genes that predispose someone to being good at making certain muscle fiber types - fast twitch, slow twitch for bodybuilders and sprinters etc. However, you can build more fast twitch and slow twitch even without being predisposed towards making them with the greater efficacy of other people w/ the gene.
I've tutored young kids with math as well and it is undoubtedly true that some children are naturally more gifted than others. The people here saying there is no math gene are not aware of true math geniuses.
The majority of people in this world are in fact capable of learning decently high level maths but once you reach modern algebra/ analysis level math you will see the disparities become apparent again. I was above average with algebraic subjects and as soon as the teacher spoke I just knew what it meant for a group to be Abelian and how this would fit in with the conjugacy classes in a group. Put me in analysis and I am normal.
It gets worse after the undergrad level because then people like me who were great with respect to their peers are again the normal. It's at this point that you drop out of pure math and desperately attempt to get into finance. If anyone needs a display of just how much this subject can be a natural phenomenon just go look up srinivasa ramanujan.
Ramanujan is certainly a peculiar case, but I wouldn't call his body of work particularly prodigious. Gifted, certainly, the guy had like, two books in his town and used them to rebuild a large portion of what was known at the time (as well as a few new things), and without a doubt, what he accomplished given what was available was incredibly impressive. But, what he accomplished was primarily driven by a tremendous interest and abundant practice. The latter can be accomplished by anyone, but the former is harder to come by. I'm not trying to discredit Ramanujan, just trying to point out that what he accomplished isn't unnatural, despite it's amazing breadth. Anyone can be good at math if they like it and practice as much as possible.
For some clarity, I can only think of three mathematicians who have ever walked the planet Earth whose talent I would describe as "unnatural" - Archimedes, Newton, and Godel.
I don’t know too much about math, perhaps you could help me on this. Lots of stuff in science and math seems incremental, standing-on-the-shoulders-of-giants type progress. The people who do these things are smart, to be sure, but if they didn’t exist then not too much time would pass before somebody else made the same accomplishment. But occasionally there is a really brilliant guy who comes up with something that launches the field forward in a way that wouldn’t have happened for a long time if he didn’t exist. These are the people that should be considered very special in my mind. So the fact that Newton and Leibniz invented calculus at the same time (and both were building off of Descartes) sort of reduces their standing in my mind, while the findings of Archimedes were incredibly novel and he is a freak of nature. Do you think this is a fair metric for judging mathematicians? If so, what mathematicians would be considered special by it?
This guy who knows absolutely nothing about basic logic is somehow talking about how Godel is an unnatural math talent.
Fucking Retard
mathtrollin
Yes, chinese
Not sure about a gene, but I know that my entire college life was a case of, "let me finish this term paper, lol ez-pz, A incoming," followed by, "let me just get a six-pack before I call this trick to do that f'in calculus homework for me."
not going to get into a nerdy math debate on here but your logic is seriously disturbing. You think a man who failed out of school and had no training in maths but went on to Cambridge after impressing one of the great mathematicians of that era is normal?
Do you even know what the ramanujanprime is? You seem to have only heard of the results that are most abused from math at this time to bring up the three names that you did. Number theory is the one field of math that true brilliance comes out. I'm also not enough of a fool to say Godel wasn't great but seriously you are an ass to say anyone could be ramanujan and every professor in my math department would want your head.
No? I said nothing of the sort. I have no idea how you came to that conclusion by reading what I wrote.
I disagree. I think very highly of Fermat and Euler, don't get me wrong. But by your logic, Newton, Galois, Riemann, and Cantor only displayed "true brilliance" when building upon it, which is an absurd proposition.
No you beat around the bush by saying his work was prodigious immediately followed by saying how they were the result of hard work.
By the way Riemann has one of the greatest open questions in analytic number theory and Newton did nothing to build number theory so I'm going to chalk this up to a poor education.
And yes I would boldly say that Newton was not truly brilliant for working on Calculus when it is not as obvious as you think that he was the foundation for the subject. Leibiniz was forced to work as a historian for a wealthy family which detracted from his time to work on maths while newton held The Chair at Cambridge. You don't just get to publish an academic paper. Leibiniz I believe had to use the trips that his family would send him on in order to meet with the right academics to push his work.
Why was Newton's calculus chosen? He had better notation; period. Leibiniz was a smarter man. He attempted to create a language in which the truth values of statements could be verified simply through the use of the language. He didn't succeed but his work continued through George Boole, whose work continued with Alan Turing and gave us computability theory and the foundations of modern computer science. Meanwhile your friend Newton was out working on building up theories in alchemy.
Stop spewing out crap you heard on the History channel please, I'm getting nauseous.
Yes, his work was prolific and impressive, and his prolific and impressive work was the result of hard work. I'm unsure why you find this so appalling.
Yes, this is true, but given that his work in geometry and topology formed the basis for the general theory of relativity, I can't see how you can come to the conclusion that Riemann geometry isn't a sign of "true brilliance".
See: Newton Polygon. I hear that's a pretty popular tool in algebraic number theory.
Modern calculus more closely resembles Leibniz's notation, not Netwon's. Newton merely finished first, by several years. Your statement about an attempt to create a language that can verify "the truth value of statements" suggests you're not a mathematician. They're called "proofs" and there's only the one language.
Me too. I don't like having to explain myself to some unreasonably outraged diletante.
^^I was kidding about the Chinese math gene, simmer down. Bengigi that just made me laugh
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