When I was younger I really wanted to be one of two things; A software developer, or some form of engineer (likely within the marine sector). I was fascinated by both and my father was a fisherman, so I had a leaning towards boats but no huge interest in them (I have a mobility issue which makes getting onto and moving around on boats tricky, but not impossible). I was so sure that this was going to be a thing that if you'd told me where I'd actually end up in my 30s (a decently paid for what it is, but fairly low-level customer service position... at an engineering firm) I would've been devastated. For what it's worth, I'm not actually too bothered about it now. It's not like I'm looking back with huge regrets or anything. Just curiosity, really.
At school I was rubbish at maths (I vividly remember that in year 3/4, we all had to do times tables at the start of Friday's class from memory ("one multiplied by one is one, one multiplied by two is two", etc up to 10), and if you nailed it you moved onto the next table the following week. While I wasn't the absolute last in the class, compared to my ability in other subjects I lagged way behind, and I remember celebrating openly when I got the 6 times table right and got told off and had to do it again the next week. :@). This, for some reason, didn't hamper my enthusiasm for engineering.
I got good grades in most things at secondary school. Except maths. I got a C at GSCE, so it's not like I failed, but my other grades were B or better (except Religious Education, which I completely sandbagged on purpose). I went to college (UK college, not US if that wasn't obvious) and did software engineering. Still undeterred by my maths inability. I actually smashed it, and got a really good grade.
I went to university (at a pretty good polytechnic, but still a polytechnic) but dropped out after a year because certain modules were just too hard and I couldn't get my head around it. Guess which ones?
The ones involving lots of maths.
More recently, now that YouTube is a thing and there are engineering and science channels all over the place, I find myself watching a lot of education-oriented engineering/science content and having the same issue. The basic concepts I'm fine with, but once it gets down to a level that requires complex mathematics, or even fairly basic, college-level maths, I'm screwed.
I'm a massive baseball fan, and I love diving into the statistics. Spreadsheets are my friends. But when it comes to sabrmetrics and such (mathematical/statistical calculations based on the basic data), despite my keen interest, I get lost easily.
I even sometimes, to this day, have difficulty remembering basic stuff. My job infrequently requires me to add or subtract a percentage from a total, and despite doing it numerous times per month, I usually have to consult my notes to remember which calculation to use. If you asked me to multiply two numbers together, I'd NEED a calculator unless one of them was a 5 or a 2 (or a 1, obvs) or they were very low numbers. Even addition and subtraction takes a minute if I have to go over a 10s threshold. For example, I could do 16-4 instantly, but 16-9 would take a second because my brain would have to do "9-6 = 3 and then 10-3 =7". I can't just go "16 minus 9 is 7", despite how obvious that might seem to anyone else.
I've just been wondering recently... was I doomed from the start? Are some people's brains demonstrably just better at some things than others? I've been told that I've got 'a way with words' and am quite good at creative writing and especially written tasks in my various job roles, without really being interested or trying too much. I don't know the advanced nuts and bolts of language (like what a diphthong is, or even what adverbs are really without looking it up). I'm not great at foreign languages (though I'd say better than average among people who only speak one language natively). However I just kind of "know" how to write well and I "know" how to spell words without even thinking about it. So I've always said that "I do letters, not numbers". But recently I've been wondering whether that's really just "the way it is", or whether it was some kind of educational/behavioural situation growing up that I wasn't aware of at the time that made it so.
If I was able to get into a time machine and go back to when I was seven, keeping the knowledge that in a past life I was really bad at maths, would I be able to "be better" at it? Or would I need a new brain? I would be interested in knowing if there was any science to back this up (or whether there's a better subreddit to ask in)?
Submitted May 01, 2019 at 05:10AM by iron-raven http://bit.ly/2V5LhZL
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