Why do people hate mathematics?

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NUMBERPHILE

Videos by Brady Haran

[MrNisse-efby]

Because most math teachers don't teach math in context. When you're told to "just remember the formula", without being given an application that fits the equation...you may as well be learning English by memorizing the order of the letters, without being taught what the words actually mean.

[criskity]

People hate math because it's often taught in boring and uninspiring ways.

[EdWoodJr]

There are three types of people: those who are good with numbers, and those who are not.

[praja]

Math is only Satisfying when U understand how it works

[ZXbolterZX]

It's not that I hate it. It just makes my brain hurt. Making me hate it

[numberphile]

If someone wants to transcribe the video for me, I will happily add a caption file!

[prwexler]

People don't hate mathematics.  They hate practicing mathematics.

People don't hate reading.  They hate practicing to read.

People don't hate playing music.  They hate practicing to play music.

Math(s), reading, and playing music all require repeated practice so that the process can be "felt, " or internalized.  Once the student gets past learning, these things become a joy to do.  It's getting over the hump that is painful for most people.

I agree with Edward Frenkel that people should be shown some interesting outcomes derived from what is to be learned.  Most (though not all) "Dummies" books do that.  The first chapter is almost always devoted to a small example which serves as a hook.

I don't think that I've ever met a person who's mastered a subject and still dislikes it.  Reaching proficiency is a painful process.  Once proficient, any subject becomes gratifying.

[redrom]

Personally, the reason that made math irritating for me to learn were the ways in which all my of my teachers presented/explained it. For example, all of the teachers I've ever had only showed me how to do a problem, but they have never showed me why its done that way. For me, I need to know WHY questions are done in specific ways. I've only been taught how to use formulas, not taught why these formulas are used. Hopefully this made sense.

[gustavopaz]

People hate math because modern education is a joke, and they fail to motivate students to discover the fun and fascination of learning things.

[khtvrby]

I'm currently in high school. I can tell you why kids hate math.

Let's start with why kids hate school. Seven hours a day, five days a week, forty weeks a year, kids are forced to endure hell. Waking up at 6:30 to be somewhere they don't even want to be at 8:05, wandering around hallways that are often worse than rush hour traffic, all to sit down, and be silent for an hour to be lectured about something they usually don't care about. Then, they have a very short intermission before they have to sit down in another place for another hour. In short, they're bored. They just don't care, and I won't claim innocence from this. I don't care about what happened thousands of years ago, I don't care about old books. Now, I am interested in math and science, but I seem to be the outlier. To most kids, memorizing all of these theorems and postulates and formulas is nothing more than a chore. As I know you're aware, "When am I ever going to use this?" is one of the most commonly asked questions in a math class, and they're right. Most people aren't going to need to find the length of the hypotenuse of a triangle based on its sides, or find the volume of a sphere, and that's some of the most "basic" stuff that's taught. Also, the work assigned by teachers is extremely tedious, and extremely boring. I think most people will get the concept that the teacher is trying to teach after about 5 examples. Assigning 30 or more, which I see often, is just way too much. Now, I understand the thinking behind it. "Repetition, repetition, repetition, " but again, kids get extremely bored of this extremely quickly. 

The problem isn't the math, the problem is the way it's taught. Teachers need to give examples of how the math they're teaching will be used in real life, and the homework should be less of a chore. Unfortunately, I don't know how this would be achieved, but if nothing is done, the upcoming generation will be one that thinks math to be boring, tedious, and useless, and that is unacceptable.

[UnluckyFatGuy]

I can see mathematics as beautiful and nuanced, but unfortunately it isn't taught that way. It's taught as a regimental and rote exercises that are incredibly boring. That's no way to spark passion in a person

[AndreaNutri]

Why hate Maths? Because if you skip a little, tiny bit of your equation, or any other notion you've been taught, that small error becomes a HUGE snowball that, in the end, makes all your previous work useless; and going back to find where that "snowball" started is incredibly frustrating.

[Ted]

That dude's accent is straight out amazing.

[piercethepenguins]

I dislike math because our teachers never taught us to question it. Formulas, for example. Why do I put the numbers here? Why do I have to subtract a random number from that value? Why can't I just use a protractor to find the angle measure, or a ruler to find the side measure, or logic instead of theorems?  

[wcdeich]

many people hate math b/c it's taught mostly w/ memorization instead of conceptualization .

[Borednesss]

I can relate to this... growing up through high school I always thought I was terrible at math and I had no interest in it; it wasn't until I had an awesome professor in college and got into higher levels of math that I became very interested and actually pretty good at it. It became a lot easier than I thought

[ryanmmoore]

it's insane seeing the amount of students had come to any of my classes (when I taught) that would say they hated math, and trying to discuss with them the 'why' of that, and turns out that they had early math teachers who never really undestood the concepts themselves... so the 'unease' of math was transferred from that terrible teacher to an entire generation of students.

[LordBenjaminSalt]

I missed half the words because I was distracted by his wonderful accent.

[thekappa]

Many people hate maths because our schools keep teaching us the boring part of maths. Same goes for science. If I am more interested in learning from Vsauce than a teacher at school then there is something wrong with the education system

[IceMetalPunk]

If I were a math teacher, I'd start the first class of every year/semester with this challenge to my students: "Math is everywhere. It's in everything we see, everything we do, and everything we feel. I know, you don't believe me, I'm just a mathematician shilling for my art. So I'll tell you what: I'll prove it. Everyone, write down on a piece of paper something you think has nothing to do with math. Something that can't possibly relate to math. Fold the papers up and pass them to the front of the classroom." I'd then proceed to read off all the papers and explain, one by one, how each relates very much to math. If there are duplicates, I'd list a different mathematical aspect each time. Every student would then be hit with the realization that they couldn't possibly live without math. And then, hopefully, that would motivate them to want to learn it a little more.