Ask Lemmy

I think for people like me, it isn't that we dislike math. It's that we dislike having to work out the formulas without there being much instruction on what the formula is doing. I want to know the theory behind it. Explain, at least once in a while, what is happening in the formula. Without context of what the calculations and formulas are doing (including refreshers on the basics) it starts to become just a jumble of meaningless numbers.

I find that my understanding of math is much better when I can see each step written out in long form. Once I understand what is happening, using the formulas is much easier.

If the instruction is just a string of memorization exercises, I will pass the test when it is given, but would I fail that same test just a few months later because I will have no context to give it meaning and I will forget most of it.

I’m bad at it and I get numbers mixed up pretty easily.

Example: I went to a pro sports game over the weekend. I sat 4 of us in the wrong row because I read the row number wrong. I saw row 12 but read row 15. I tend to mix up numbers like that often and then I get the answers to math problems wrong. This is highly frustrating to me and it makes me not like math very much.

I don't dislike math but im better at shape oriented ones like geometry and calculus as opposed to algebra and differential equations. as far as basic stuff I like suduko and doing price per unit measurement at the store just to be somewhat practiced in it.

Just don't want to do it

I don't trust math. Something doesn't add up here.

I just really really don't care for it. Not the math, not physics. I don't care if you can calculate the velocity of a car downhill. I don't care how heavy the tower of our local castle is. I've yet to meet a math problem apart from grocery cost that I care to know the answer of.

I was actually always pretty good at math, I had Bs and sometimes As. I can memorize the formulas and fill them in and do the equations. But none of it interested me even in the slightest.

I started actively disliking math when people around me pushed it on me as this be-all-end-all definition of intelligence. Understanding math isn't enough, you have to actually LOVE calculating advanced math problems in your head, otherwise you're not smart.

I got tired of crying from anxiety from attempting to do math, and the teacher not understanding that I can't learn by just looking at other problems on the blackboard that I couldn't understand.

my brain functions different from most with math, and teachers couldn't adapt to how I needed to learn so I always broke down and was then ignored. never cared for math and just restored to calculators, even to this day. just can't do it.

I somehow feel that you're getting a small sample size here

It's just extremely difficult for me to hold a value in my head and perform an operation against another. I do understand the operations though, the concept is fine, the problem is that of numerical values. Numbers. I'm horrible with them. Always had problems remembering important historical dates, my own personal numbers (ids, age, etc). Because it's such a struggle it becomes very tiring very quickly, and frustrating. That's what's hard.

I enjoy solving problems and tinkering, in math class the problem were always way too theoretical. In physics that same math became interesting because it had an application.

I loved math. In 8th grade I was taking 10th grade math. Going into high school, they didn't accept the advanced course credit and made me retake 9th and 10th grade math. I slept through the classes, passing all the same. From my perspective the teachers appeared to dislike me, not caring about content I already knew, disrespecting them by sleeping and coasting through their class. By 11th grade when I finally reached new content, I didn't care anymore; math class remained naptime all the same.

In school, I liked anything related to geometry where there were shapes and things to look at (note that I liked it, not that I was good at it). Anything more abstract was just juggling numbers to me, it all meant nothing, I never knew why I was doing anything.

I took A Level Maths, and I just find it really tiring mentally far more than any other task I do, so after doing some practise and still having to do more, I found it draining and unpleasant. Some people say they enjoy the process, I just don't. I don't know exactly why, I just don't feel the same surge of pleasure that others do when they solve a problem I guess. I like programming though, which is applying maths, and I like being able to use maths to active my goals. I don't enjoy doing it for its own sake.

Because through my game development career I learned to solve mathematical problems algorithmically, and my brain is just structured that way, I cannot do formulas. Well I can, but it takes active fighting against my brain structure.

I had one of those old-school maths teachers who hates maths, teaching, and children.

Had to figure out on my own that maths can be fun and useful.

I just don't care for it. I know it matters and makes up all our rules for the physical world and everything but it's not interesting to me. I'm much more interested in social/psychological studies of life, so math talk just flies over my head most of the time.

Also would agree with you about the educational system though. Growing up I was always held back and taken aside because I wasn't doing the math either fast enough or "the right way". I learned different tricks for multiplication than were taught at my school, but I would get to the correct answer. I was punished for this. It also shouldn't matter how fast you can do math, as long as you're getting the right answer. I fucking hated "math minutes" and had a lot of shitty teachers. Had some good ones too though.

Although i do like math, it's very easy for me to understand why someone wouldn't. Just think about any subject that you dislike, and now you know the approximate feeling of someone not liking math

I think there's no way to tell if most people would enjoy math under the right circumstances but in my case you are absolutely right. Back in school I hated it, didn't wan't to find out more or even retain what I had to learn for tests.

That changed drastically when I studied philosophy. I learned about scholars there who "practiced" math in an almost spiritual way. Just by engaging with it, exploring this abstract world and uncovering its mysteries. Even if you don't take it quite this far philosophy and math are very closely related. It's probably gonna be tough for someone without a rough grasp of essential mathematical concepts to engage with metaphysics or formal logic.

Now that I'm a mechatronics technician I even need math in my day to day life, a lot more than I had ever anticipated. And I like it. I like how no matter how counterintuitive the method, if math says it works then it will. It's not just an abstract world of it's own, it's also woven into our world wherever you look.

I never sucked but I'm bad at abstract thought (if you can call it that), so I never enjoyed math. I'm much more of a visual/ auditory learner. Things like geometry were easy, but once I got to calculus I said "fuck this".

Because my brain had/has enough room to hold diagraming sentences or higher mathematics. And I chose the one that allows for me to insult people in a way where they know I'm insulting them, but are unable to articulate how I'm insulting them.

Because I only have a limited amount of dopamine to spend each day, and I rather not waste it on something as boring as math. ADHD does not allow me to pursue things that don't interest me unless I'm forced to.

Neurotypical people with plenty of dopamine to spare may struggle to understand the concept of their brain physically stopping their body from doing anything that doesn't feel satisfying, nor rewarding to do. But it's a real thing that happens.

it's not that I don't like it, I just don't like it as much as I used to.

I wanted to be a math teacher once upon a time. then, one year the teacher I really looked up to held the entire class back for over two months because 3-5 students couldn't grasp sin cos & tan. it should have taken us three weeks but instead took us almost three times as long.

by the end of it, the students that still didn't grasp it still didn't grasp it and the students that did grasp it no longer grasped it.

I was burnt out on it and honestly threw myself into tech just to get the fuck away from math.

worked out in my favor. teachers get paid three to four times less than I do currently, so it was a win.

I still couldn't give a fuck about sin cos & tan.

It doesn't answer any questions I'm interested in.

I do the basics because I have to budget. Interpreting and understanding statistics are helpful at work. Sometimes I build things, and sometimes math helps.

I like the concept and learning about the history and all, but putting it in practice is annoying

Making imports and running some code functions to apply math things is a lot less annoying

Abstract thinking, difficulty seeing the point of doing maths when no teacher explains how it's actually useful. Essentially a teacher failure, as far as I'm concerned. Today I love maths, at least the little I know, but it took a long time getting over the trauma. Fuck you, inept teachers.

It's really hard to understand some of it. It might've been fun if I had good math instructors for every class at every step of the way from algebra to ordinary differentials. Because so much material builds on what was taught before, it gradually got more and more incomprehensible until I gave up trying to understand it halfway through cal 2 and just memorized the important parts enough to pass. Besides that, I rarely see applications in day to day life past basic algebra. It's not like I'm gonna take careful measurements of how fast my car's going to derive my exact fuel consumption rate. It's easier to just go off the odometer and gas pump readings between fills for instance.

I have excellent long-term memory but have always struggled with keeping strings of numbers in my short-term memory. You can imagine the struggle when trying to solve a function is like trying to make a bed with a slightly too small fitted sheet

It's illegal. A tiny amount of it on the head of a pin can kill an elephant.

I was plenty good at maths up to the point where I couldn't study more (as in, my other subject choices locked me out of taking the next stage, A-level). However in general I found the more complex stuff abstract and characterless.

For example statistics bored me. We're working out the upper quartile something something? To what end?

I've used maths for accounts, programming, carpentry, and so forth, but that's always been fairly basic stuff. The more advanced stuff has never been of the slightest value to me (I still don't know why I, a layman, should give a shit about factorisation, prime numbers, happy numbers, etc..). I am not saying that it has no value - simply that to me personally it might as well be memorising the principles behind a naming scheme for shades of grey paint. I can learn the principles and they make sense, but so what?

I pretty much felt the same way about the higher levels of chemistry. Oh these are ionic bonds? Okay..?

My teachers were excellent and enthusiastic (my entire maths class got the highest grade possible, myself included) but I don't really see what there is to like. I didn't dislike it, I was just indifferent. The easier stuff could be like a basic puzzle game, the more complex stuff I could apply the system I learned and provide the correct, if pointless, answer.

It felt like being taught someone else's complex system for sorting different sizes of white paper, I suppose I could say.

I feel like most people would like programming but here we are. :)

I’ve grown in appreciation for math in the last couple of years, especially when it comes to things that are necessary or practical in my day to day life.

I hated it in school though, mostly because of bad teachers, I think, and because it’s an area of study with cut and dry answers.

I always preferred subjects where there were many possible answers to a question, like philosophy and such.

Why would I like math? It’s just numbers and logic. Why do you think that should be fun?

I disliked math because I would always do poorly on timed math problems in grade school. I couldn’t memorize things and still can’t, but I can work through problems and know how to look up theorems. This continued through grade school until college.

after struggling on calculus for my major, then switching majors and oddly having to take algebra, I found math to be easy to the point that my teacher told me I could skip the final and still ace the class.

I still hate math. I liked that Numbers tv show though.

Asking why people don't like something is probably the wrong way to approach this. Ask why people do like it and then you will say that some people will not appreciate the qualities mentioned.

But maths is hard, objectively. It's abstract and it's about logic and the precise application of rules and a lot of people are just not good at those things.

The heart of doing maths is solving puzzles. Not practical puzzles like "how do I build a cool robot" (though maths comes up in engineering of course) but puzzles that are posed without necessarily having any relation to the real world. "Prove that the limit of this sequence is 2" - "what for?" It's like doing sudoku or crosswords, if that doesn't tickle your brain, you won't like it.