Maths help. Can someone not dumb like me help me please.

[IncompleteSenten]

If I have a box that measures 432mm X 254mm X 140mm
How many items measuring 200mm X 50mm X 30mm can I fit in it?

If you can help - thank you. I have discovered I'm as thick as pigshit. 😭

You're right. I had to sing it.
Well, I probably didn't have to sing it but what the hell 😁

Your explanation makes perfect sense.

Kind of use it or lose it.

But what if one train left the station travelling at 47km/hr and the second train left 32mins later travelling at 76km/hr...

It's badly taught and you're also looking at a separate skillset that can be described by maths (as can everything), but actually relates to visual/spatial awareness: I am really, really good at mechanical/engineering type questions, navigation, drawing scale plans, graphics and physics. This meant that the mathematical explanations of these things instantly made sense to me, as they described stuff I could immediately see in my head.

The badly taught aspect is where some teachers don't appreciate that not everybody has a linear concept of the world where numbers alone make sense.

I was always told I was crap at maths by my mother who didn't even pass a CSE in it. I'm not. I excel at applied maths/physics and I'm good at standard stuff (I actively enjoy moving around formulae to solve or simplify - but in my head, I'm swirling around physical things of different size, shape and colour like a Find The Lady card trick).

I've taught adult learners numeracy. The successes came with cartoons illustrating what division means, actions showing how hundreds, tens, units and decimals are laid out/slot into place and pictures of 2 and 3 dimensional shapes for them to relate the words of the questions to a physical thing that could be then described in mathematical terms. Once they could see how these concepts related to 'things', their progress was phenomenally fast.

None of the people I taught were thick - the fastest progress was made by the man who was at pre entry level in September. Two years later, he got an A-star at GCSE. He just needed to 'see' what the squiggles on the page meant and became unstoppable from that moment on.

That's the sort of homework that had me under my bed in the foetal position

It’s surprisingly common to be able to do arithmetic (which is mainly procedural, counting and memory work) but struggle with anything further. For some people it’s due to something called NVLD (nonverbal learning difficulty) which is a bit like dyslexia but with shapes and spatial skills (causes problems in areas you wouldn’t suspect, like working with fractions or long division). Their brains just don’t ‘do’ visual stuff.

Others struggle with conceptualising their number work as an abstract process (can remember as a kid first coming across x as a ‘doesn’t matter what it is’ number, and being outraged at such a ridiculous thing in a maths question 😂) and so they can’t build further understanding. Often one vital step in understanding has been left out of previous learning. Carrying figures, plus/minus numbers, long division - it’s possible to do all these procedurally without really understanding how they work.

My spacial awareness is awful.
I'm forever bashing into stuff.

@CountingMareep - this interesting . Arithmetic - I can do - Once we got to area under a curve - I just looked at it and said Maths is not my friend. Not sure it is visual as such ut I wonder ( my son is dyslexic ) whether I have a maths equivalent.

That’s another skill altogether, that of applying numbers to real life problems, and then organising the numerical facts in the right order to formulate the correct sums. Also very under-taught. We were expected to jump straight from adding four-column numbers on paper, to solving problems like the one above, without any hints or general guidance as to how to analyse the question.

@BasiliskStare If you were dyslexic then the above ‘word based’ questions would themselves be a challenge due to all the analysis and re-sequencing you’d have to do. For dyslexics such questions are like walking down the street backwards.

Interesting discussion...
I wasn't aware of any particular problem with maths teaching, but all my family is 'good at maths' - DD and I both did 2 a levels and physics, she's an engineer, DH and I are chemists but I write software so it's maths (numerical and spatial type) not test tubes! But at uni, the professor who taught my maths course made huge jumps of 'this is intuitively obvious' in post A level stuff.. only to him! I guess that's what many people find in schools.

And it's definitely a use it or lose it thing - at 62 there's bits of maths I'm still fine at because I use them but other areas I can't do now that I could in my 20s.

@LaPerduta

I have two dc.
One has flown effortlessy through primary and is on course to effortlessy get a very good clutch of 9s and 8/ 7 at gcse. Her teacher said she can get the 9 at gcse in maths.

However my other dc is probably dyslexic and wasn't able to access the curriculum at all for years and we were told to wait.. Not a single person we spoke too as I became increasingly worried mentioned any possible special education need at all.

If it was down to them I would still be waiting for it to click as they said.
Thankfully I was able financially to get her taught outside of the school. I had to pay for two tutors and teach her myself.

So why is it a surprise to you, and why would you assume people in the UK system should know anything?

Op is very graciously blaming herself for this.
I push that blame back onto our clunky clumsy education system that turns out far too many illiterate Children because it can't cope with making even the slightest changes to how it works.

It seems we've got a system which is good at teaching maths to children who are good at maths but not great for the others.
Are there countries which do better? Do some of them tend to leave advanced maths till uni or do they differentiate more, earlier?

Had a system. It's important to remember that adults today were taught a curriculum which no longer exists using approaches that have long since changed.

The current approach works for the vast majority of people. In my experience, most problems with regards to Maths come from societal attitudes towards the subject. In the UK, it is seen as being socially acceptable to be "bad at Maths". In fact, being "good at Maths" is sometimes talked about as a negative thing (geeky, nerdy, etc.) You can see this on a family level too. I've lost count of the number of parents who have said some variation of the following during meetings with them:
"Oh, she's like me: I'm no good at Maths."
"I'm glad you're teaching her because none of this makes any sense to me."
"Oh I just don't do Maths: that's for her dad to do."

Very satisfying 😁

I think it’s quite a hard problem actually. I totally agree that just because you might have been able to do it 30 years ago now might be another story.

Thing is it does require good spacial awareness - like the people who can pack car boots with loads more stuff just by taking the bags out and putting them in a different way round. I do not possess this skill.

I got to at least 42. In terms of total volume, if the items were squishy and not rigid I think you could fit another 9. Whether you actually can by putting them in in a funky pattern I have no idea at all, but there does seem to be quite a lot of unused space……

Yes, this kind of thing is very unhelpful, especially for girls.

In the UK, it is seen as being socially acceptable to be "bad at Maths".

Or scientifically illiterate, whereas stem types may be derided as geeks or philistines if they're not au fait with literature....
But I do believe that's changing, especially now more high paying jobs require strong maths. I hope the sexist element is on the wane... back in the day, only one other girl did double maths with me, whereas DD at a girls school was in a large FM set.

I can't speak for anyone else but I don't feel socially acceptable or cool or what have you. I feel stupid to struggle with something I'm told kids can breeze through. It's embarrassing.

My dad will be turning in his grave!

I don't mean on an individual level but as a society as a whole. It's in contrast to literacy for which it would be exceptionally rare to hear someone openly say "I'm illiterate," as part of everyday conversation.

Agreed, but the level of literacy on sites such as MN is shockingly low. I don't think a lot of people realise how poor their written English is.

You aren't dumb. You just aren't wired to find this easy. There will be a thousand thing you can do with ease that others can't