Why are some people bad at maths? - CrowdScience podcast, BBC World Service

When CrowdScience listener Israel from Papua New Guinea did badly on a maths test in third grade, he looked around the class and realised that almost all the other students had received a better result.

Since then, he has always wondered: Why are some people better at maths than others?

And Israel isn’t the only one to think about this. Our listeners from all over the world describe their relationships with numbers, which run the full gamut from love to hate. So are we all in control of our own mathematical fate, or are some people just naturally bad at it?

Presenter Anand Jagatia hears about studies of identical and non-identical twins showing how genetics and environment interact to shape our mathematical abilities.

Our numerical abilities are not set in stone. It’s always possible to improve and getting rid of negative feelings and anxiety around maths could be the key, says psychologist Iro Xenidou-Dervou.

Some countries seem to support children’s maths skills better than others. China and Finland both rank highly in international league tables. Education experts in both countries discuss whether there are any keys to a successful mathematics education.

And there is something underlying our ability to do maths in the first place - our number sense. We hear what happens when this number sense does not work as intended and what can be done about it.

00:00 Can you solve this maths problem?
01:14 CrowdScience listener Israel from Papua New Guinea
04:13 Can you be naturally good or bad at maths?
10:00 Maths anxiety
14:22 Top performing countries
19:20 The cultures that don’t use counting words
22:19 Dyscalculia
26:05 Emma’s story
27:46 Maths problem – the answer

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[savannahm.laurentian]

Until I was in my 12th year of schooling in America, I was led to believe I couldn't do math. Then an extraordinary teacher proved them all wrong. TEACHERS MATTER.

[user-rxtxpxdx]

I don't think math itself is hard but the way it has been represented by the teachers made the difference.

[paulbennett]

A teacher who engages you is very important - I didn't have one but still did ok; having left school 50+ years ago I've gained more knowledge because of my own interest. I'm now over 70 & still learning, because I'm INTERESTED.

[richerDiLefto]

It isn’t that math is hard, it’s just poorly presented by a lot of teachers. My math anxiety started in the first grade when my teacher was extremely impatient with me learning to subtract. She would try to force answers out of me without breaking the concepts down for me in a more digestible manner.

After that, I floundered through math all the way until high school, dealing with sarcastic teachers who would even mock students who were slower at it and enduring memorization and rules-based learning that gave me **no** clue what was going on in any of the problems (I’m a visual-spatial learner). Homework was a nightmare when I would always end up crying and my poor mom would angrily break pencils because she couldn’t get me to figure anything out. One of the things I hated the most were timed math tests, which only measured how fast people memorized things and gave me *horrendous* anxiety.

It wasn’t until college when I bought books and learned basic math myself at home my own way. As a result, I did so well at advanced algebra at school, I ended up helping other students. Go figure…

[shannonnefra]

I was afraid of Mathematics for a long time. Now I am gradually unlearning and relearning the right concepts.

[Victoria]

I used to be scared of mathematics when I was at school, but I can't believe that now I'm doing master in mathematics honors.
The only thing you need to have is a right teacher and your willingness to learn mathematics.

[tudormiller]

Yes. Dyscalculia is a real neurological disability. It's not as well known as Dyslexia. But it affects so many individuals, more than we'd like to admit.

[emjaydark]

We are so fortunate now to be able to go to the internet, ( YouTube specifically) and find any number of dedicated, patient, clear math teachers to teach any any aspect of math you are struggling with. I've been using them for a couple of years in my journey of math literacy and pleasure. Some of these people are absolute top teachers.

[droopy_]

Just start learning from Khan Academy . Keep at it. Eventually it clicks. I've began mastering high school math at age 30. It's truly an empowering experience. All you need are the basics - fractions, decimals, multiplication, and division, etc- the trick is to understand the nuanced relationships between them. Don't concern yourself with high end math. Once you truly understand the basics, math becomes easy. It's sad most schools never teach the foundations in a way that resonates. Math is such a delicate subject and in most cases it's a failure of teaching not learning.

[Diamonddavej]

My maths teacher was bullied by students in my class, and as a result, I am not exaggerating, I got about 2 hours of maths eduction from him over 4 years. I studied honours Physics and Chemistry, I excelled in these subject, but was far behind in Maths. Then one day my chemistry teacher pulled in to the side during break, and I remember the bewilderment in his face as he asked me why I was so good at physics and chemistry but rubbish at maths, it was like he was witnessing a reverse miracle.

The reason this situation happened was because my entry exam was poor due to stress, and I was initially put in classes for slower students, but my mother successfully argued they should let me study honours students for Physics and Chemistry, but they did not budge for Maths. So I was stuck with a load of brats and a bullied maths teacher. I now have a PhD and I'm a data analyst, I deal with numbers and statistics as part of my job, having taught myself maths.

[rainbowdays]

I am an Indian woman, generally people in my country loves maths, but since my childhood I do not like maths, even scared about exams. In board exam I scored 59, and was heavily mocked. Funny things is when I moved to Canada, again at age if 33, I registered for high school level math classes for adults ; believe it or not I was one of the best in my class and my teacher and classmates could not find why I was scared in maths in younger life, now I enjoyed percentile and alzebra even 😂😂

[thebeesnuts]

It's because some people can only grasp anything once they see it's application, I was bad at maths or couldn't grasp concepts easily, it's only when I started carpentry and had to know trigonometry and geometry to work out my cuts and angles and my maths understanding increased and a light bulb 💡 moment when I seen it's practical application

[PossibleBat]

I was relentlessly bullied for being bad at math so no wonder I hate it, it literally makes me so insecure and I avoid it as much as I can

[matcha_kimono]

In primary school, I was overwhelmed with learning basic multiplcation. I told my Mum that I was struggling, but she reminded me that I already knew how to do it. The reason being she had taught me 4 yrs prior when I was 4 years old, and I remembered that I loved it so much because she made it fun for me. When I remembered that I flew through the tests, even when the numbers got higher than when I learned before. The funny thing is my Mum is not very good with advanced maths and couldn't help me after I finished primary, the reason being she never finished past the 10th grade.

[monikastrojna]

I had never have to study math at school, it came really easy for me. But I believe that having a great teacher is half of success. Basically in every subject, great teacher makes a huge difference.

[mariekatherine]

Bad at maths as a child, bad at maths as an adult, bad at maths as a pensioner. I can’t imagine the concepts in my mind. However, I have an expansive imagination and an unusually prodigious memory for visuals, emotions, scents.

[esparda]

How the solution was presented at the end is a good example of HOW NOT TO TEACH MATH. That was horrible.

[Snowflake_tv]

1:40 Same experience with me. I was bad at division, I cheated 3answers from my friend beside me among 9problems in total when I was 8yrs old as 2nd grade of elementary school.
Divison is too tricky to kids because all teachers teach them as sharing, dividing, not as "repeating subtraction". All teachers show the algorithm as packaging or tieing or sharing items into a group, no one told me dividing is repetition of subtracting.

They are totally different for kids.
Packaging items into some groups means that the kid doesn't lose anything. The kid still keeps the original amount as shown as in the picture of the quiz/paper/board/his or her brain. But repeating subtraction means and shows that the kid loses the items repeatedly. They are totally different.
Dividing is not sharing. It's just minus, negative, losing or being stolen. Fckg sharing

[khairulhasan]

Some people become weak in math because of their surroundings, their imbecile teachers, their nonsense education system and their disturbingly non cooperating fellows. Those people make everything, explain everything, display everything in their very own fashion so that others can not cope with that. Of course all of us do not realize everything in the same way and hence it is the responsibility of the authority to arrange and allow diverse learning tricks for diverse types of students. Does every patient get the same treatment in hospital ? Do we have the same meal in a restaurant ?

[katarzynalaprus]

No idea. My mind "switches off" when the numbers are at play.