Quote:
Originally posted by Peaches@Jan 20 2004, 09:40 AM
d) Those who CAN'T learn. I put myself in this category regarding math/numbers. :P
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I disagree, Peaches. I think you can learn mathematics and very advanced mathematics at that. I used to have troublesome students like you who would say that. ;-) ;-) When I briefly taught high school algebra, I tricked the students into doing a calculus problem*. When I told them at the end of the day, they were doing a college calculus problem, it really changed their self-perception of their abilities.
We learn and use shortcuts in our everyday lives all the time. Whether you have learned to save 10% of your paychecks in a passbook savings account or whether you have learned to respond to the grocery cashier's usual question with "not bad". - you are living, in a way, an algorithmic-like life. There are algorithms for learning and understanding mathematics and science too. You have to learn how to learn. Learning mathematics is different than learning, say, history. One must understand application to understand the content but it is, nevertheless, a type of thinking which can be learned.
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*For those interested, their chapter was on slopes and so I taught them how to take a derivative. It's really quite easy.