Ask Lemmy

Most people don't just like to sit there and solve puzzles. Math is systems of interleaved puzzles that grow in complexity.

If you enjoy that, you like (pure) math. Most people don't - I don't think "most" would if the education system didn't fail them, the same way that most people don't like sudoku puzzles.

Personally I don't like pure math, I like applied math. Physics. I like seeing the numbers that represent the forces I can see in the real world. I sort of enjoy geometry for the same reason, but less so. I enjoy stats and probability theory to a degree.

But yeah, most people don't enjoy just sitting there and doing puzzles. There's probably a good number of people who would enjoy math if they had a different educational experience, but a ton of people just don't like doing math.

I had to take algebra 1 twice in highschool. The fist time I took a college level course, and failed, but passed my second year in the gen course. I then failed algebra 2 miserably, though I will say that year was wild for me, and I didn't really have fucks for math class. I half assed it and was not surprised I failed. You can't half ass math class.

For me, was that if I missed one lesson, it began this giant snowball effect where I couldn't catch up, so in case of my first year algebra, I gave up and failed. It's the only class I ever failed.

The class moved really fast, and I have adhd (unknown to me then). I could thrive in English, History ect because the lessons are structured differently. Math, you dont viciously pay attention, or need more time, I couldn't keep up with its pacing in highschool. Once imaginary numbers were introduced, I just, yeah.

I enjoy the concepts and structures of mathematics. Fractal geometry, holomorphic dynamics, computational theory, uncertainty principles and all that are fascinating as hell. Discrete systems dancing with continuous integrals at process limits.

I DO NOT ENJOY working with math. Specifically I cant read complex equations. I don't have an attention disorder but I swear the moment I try reading anything that looks like this I get overloaded and nope out. If it aint highschool algebra with PEMDAS I cant do it. If you put a bullet to my head and pinned my survival on properly solving a quadratic equation I'd just tell you to shoot me.

The concepts are cool once you can get past the notation to understand the ontology of whats trying to be conveyed. The actual expanded out notations and trying to do work with them is a fuckin nightmare.

Also since im ranting can I just say, across STEM the biggest problem is the naming convention. Math and science would be at least 60% more accessable if we went back and renamed all theorems, hypothesis, proofs, to be what they are about instead of just shouting out the guy who discovered it. "eulers identity" doesnt mean a fucking thing. Neither does scrodingers equations or the riemann hypothesis or turing machines. THESE ARE NOT ACCESSABLE NAMES THEY CONVEY NOTHING INTRINSICALLY BESIDES SOME DEAD GUYS LAST NAME. GET SOME PROGRAMMERS WHO KNOW HOW TO ACTUALLY DECLARE HUMAN READABLE STRINGS FOR YOUR FUCKING ABSTRACTION OBJECTS.

Some people don’t jibe with certain ways of thinking. End of.

Shit teacher. I had a good teacher one year and it turned out I wasn't actually bad at maths.

This comes off like a person who has no empathy, or who assumes everyone else thinks like they do. When I was in college, I tutored math to middle school kids, and I can say with certainty that some people's brains take to it more naturally than others. You can be very smart and still struggle with math.

And putting that aside, "enjoyment" is inherently subjective. It's like saying most people would enjoy liver and onions if they had it cooked right. No, some people will and some people won't. It's okay - people are a diverse lot and it's fine if some people don't like what you like.

Because the mathematics literature fucking sucks.

It is written by math nerds for math nerds. Show me all the fucking proof, you just spent 10 pages talking about anything and everything but you can't expand on how your formula has been transformed because of whatever theorem.

How many god damn time have I read something akin to "the proof is left to the reader. The resulting formula is [something entirely new]."

Like fuck you, show me how it's done.

the education system failed them, teaching in a way that’s not enjoyable.

Yeah, pretty much. I had to learn a ton of math, where I never got explained what it could be used for. And when it can be applied in an obvious way, namely physics, most of the complexity lays in memorizing a ton of one-letter-abbreviations and formulas, which feels pointless, too.

I'm a programmer now. That was always easy to me, because the best way to learn that is by gradually solving harder puzzles. You don't just sit in a classroom and get told all the solutions to all the puzzles...

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 like math just fine up until trigonometry and at that point my brain just can't hold onto it. Failed college calculus three times. There's something about the formulas and rules and applications that isn't intuitive for me at that level. I'm much better at the Earth Sciences and had no problems with chemistry.

"Liking" math isn't really accurate either. I don't care about math, I care about things that require math. Geometry and algebra are useful in a ton of other disciplines and activities. Playing with numbers doesn't make me feel smart or accomplished the way a puzzle does.

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

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 like algebra, it's logical and understandable for me. But calculus just falls out of my head the minute I take my eyes off of it.

I am an accountant, I love numbers and number trivia, little puzzles.

But math math, like beyond algebra? Not as much.

And early math, like arithmetic, was poisoned by bad teachers and bad teaching methods. I didn't like it before algebra, it was boring.

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.

Just don't want to do it

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’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 trust math. Something doesn't add up here.

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

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

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.

I dont understand it. Most I can do is multiply. Can't do long division on paper.

Never got it in school, failed algebra 101 3 times. Only passed by hours of tutoring every day.

I enjoy applied math if its something like calculating tolerances while building an engine, but I cant figure out an algebra equation or do large multiplication stuff at all.

I dont know what multiplication tables are either. I just know how to count up so if I need 8x3 I count 8,16, ah, 24!

Also diagnosed adhd and likely autism doesn't help.

I wish I liked math, because I love computers and mechanical engineering etc but its always held me back. Luckily my job now requires applied thinking not really math so I get to mostly do interesting stuff without complex math.

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

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.

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.

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.

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".

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

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.

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.

i used to not like it, because i struggled heavily, arithemetic was more annoying than algebra and higher, and not useful in the longrun. I think people have more problem with writing English papers than math. its a somewhat arbitrary subject, depends on the instructor(some are super-nazis of english writing, and others try to try to understand the gist of your essay, still need proper grammar) i struggled alot in english writing. surprisingly a lot of people arnt well practiced in grammar up to college level. Some instructors will rant on your paper how its inexcusable that its written a certain way.