AIBU to feel ashamed at my general lack of mathmatical ability?

[lolaflores]

Have spectacularly under achieved in maths all my life. embarrasment heaped on shame; standing at the blackboard totally blank cherry red with shame. in a few jobs basically not having a clue, too shy to ask for more explanation. laughing off my lack of mathsness but in honesty feeling deeply ashamed. If I was illiterate I would feel no different I think. I can get to grips with big concepts like how changes in interest effect our mortgage and so on. But little things fail me like 1x0 = ?, I have always said 1. At the ripe age of 45 I now know it is 0. Is that not stunningly stupid? Seriously.
I did not get the degree course I wanted due to shitty maths. Am terrified of DD2 starting maths at school and me sitting there like a lump of lard going
"erermmmmm...1".
Husband is maths boy genius. Which is nice. But I lag behind by several miles.
Anyone else feel the same

I'm so bad at maths when we divided the bill in a restaurant last week I may of erm left a 40 quid tip when it should have been 10...

OP, you say you don't like the classroom environment. I've just finished a teacher training course, and spent some time observing an adult numeracy class. It wasn't like school where everyone does the same thing at the same time, but the students worked individually with their folders, and the tutor would move around helping them out. The tutors explain things with lots of different methods, so they find something that works for everyone. It's really worth trying it, especially if you've already got GCSE Maths, you'll probably be ahead of most of the students.

YABU to feel ashamed, we all have areas we're not so good at. YANBU to want to improve your skills though. That Khan academy site looks fab.

It's not stupid not to know 0x1 =0. It's not really something you can work out, it's just a convention and you either know it or you don't. And now you do :)

Also, I am incredibly flaky and chaos-prone, and I have a maths degree, so don't write yourself off because of your personality type!

I'm awful at maths as well, and was at school too. It never really clicked for me.

I'm fine with basic add/subtract/division/multiplication but algebra, simultaneous equations, etc, completely baffle me.

I can never do those puzzles where trains leave at different times and travel at certain speeds and arrive at different stations. I haven't a clue where to start working those out.

My mind simply will not hold onto mathematical rules. I learn them, understand them for about five minutes then they slip gently away.
That is my problem too. I could do basic math no problem, I worked in a corner shop back when we had a drawer with the money in, added up on bits of paper if we needed to and made change by counting it back to the customer. But once there were formulas involved I went blank, I'd do it in class then by the time I got hom to do the homework the formula had gone poof!

I gained a CSE grade 4 in maths at school. Thought I was rubbish at it and struggled with concepts. I went back a couple of years ago and did GCSE maths. I ended up doing the higher tier paper and got myself a C. It's so different doing it as an adult. I couldn't recommend it highly enough.

I have admired a lot of the responses on this thread.

For a long time it seems to have been ok to state, almost with pride; "Oh, I was always rubbish at maths at school, I could never be bothered to learn my tables"

But there is now way those people would state with the same relish "Oh, I was always rubbish at reading, and I simply could never be bothered to learn to write."

The best posters on this thread seem to be saying 'Yes I have had a problem with maths, but I am going to do something about it'

I applaud you.

I'm crap at maths too. I cannot do simple adding up in my head. It's quite embarrassing sometimes. I can't check my change is correct in shops because I can't work out how much I'm supposed to get! I must have been short changed tonnes of times.

I use my phone calculator a lot when working out how much something will cost after 20% or whatever off. I pretend I'm messaging someone so I don't look stupid.

I think it's too late for me to condition my brain into quick thinking with maths, but this is the main reason I enrolled my 4 year old into Kumon.
I really don't want her to suffer in everyday maths like I do. I still managed to get a C grade at GCSE, but can't remember anything I learnt.

Khan Academy's great, I love it. I started using it when I decided to do a maths course with the OU. The course was fantastic too (MU123, pretty basic) and now I am doing a Maths and Stats degree! I am now on my third OU maths course, and it's great. Love OU and love Mr Khan.

I also love the Khan Academy, mainly because it sounds like you are being taught by Frank Zappa, one of my heroes.

(Probably won't mean much to anyone less than 45)

I teach maths in a H.E engineering dept. I find that many people simply have never had the basics properly explained. Then when they try to move on, understandably they struggle. If you can barely count you can hardly do addition. If you can't add you will not cope with algebra etc. I sometimes have to go back to fundamental concepts in the first few weeks but I think the vast majority can do more maths than they think. A lot of general arithmetic you do intuitively if you think about it e.g. estimating costs, working out mileages, budgeting etc. Even if you are not "good" at these you probably understand the concept and that is half the battle.

Kumon Maths is very good for taking you back to first principles. There's no reason why an adult can't do it.

I can't do maths - my 13 year old is doing stuff i have no idea about now! But thats ok cos I am really good at everything else

Don't be ashamed! You might like 'maths for mums and dads' by Rob Eastaway in preparation for supporting Dd at school.

Honestly, if you've got GCSE maths then you've already got a head start on me. I got a 'U' for my O Level (twice) and didn't get past lesson 4 of the GSCE when I tried it as an adult.

However, I've worked in a stock accounts department, retail and managed a multi pound budget for a national company.

I freely admit that whilst my arithmetic is good, my maths is non-existent. I recently did an adult learning maths assessment and was told that my maths is fine. Obviously it isn't but that made me think that perhaps I was being a little hard on myself.

I would love to be better at maths but my brain just refuses to retain that type of info. My DH is brilliant at maths however (engineer type) but always asks me for help with spelling etc.

I have a first class degree in maths from.a Russell Group university. I am a qualified accountant.
I can't do sums. Use the calculator on my phone to split bills etc.
You should be proud of getting your gcse. To my mind there is nothing special in being able to recite times tables. I never learnt them and would struggle with 6's. It's learning by rote rather than understanding. Same as multiplying by 0. Just something to memorise. Not an indication of intelligence...

all the problems I have had with maths have been emotional...I am just too antagonistic towards concepts I don't quite get....I had it at infants school with negative numbers, junior school with triangle numbers, secondary school with half angle formulae, uni with quarternions.....

basically every time I encounter new maths concepts the red mist descends. Worst of all my husband is convinced he can fix me and that I would be great at maths if I only let myself.

Now I have been taught a bit of teaching and learning theory I have discovered that it is actually quite common to experience painful raging when on the verge of understanding something new...so I feel slightly less of a freak for pulling Dh-to-be's curtains off the wall at uni...

But little things fail me like 1x0 = ?, I have always said 1. At the ripe age of 45 I now know it is 0. Is that not stunningly stupid? Seriously.

No not stupid. It means you don't understand multiplication, which means you were either not taught it, or taught it badly.

The Romans built an empire without a 0. Zero is an odd concept, it's not an actual number, it's the absence of a number, but is used in calculations as a number.

I've taught GCSE maths and I've tutored as well. The GCSE class was all mature students and if I ad a penny for every time someone said "Ah that's what that means", or "why didn't anyone tell me that at school".

I do understand the dyscalcula, I'm dyslexic so I understnad struggling when other people find it easy.

I also think if you are not a natural maths type then sitting looking at a board is not the best way to learn.

Eg 2 x 0 =

Just written down does not mean much if you don't understand the concept. But if I said "hold out your hand, ok you have nothing in your hand, now hold out your other hand, that has nothing in it either, so how much nothing have you got all together?"

OK, OP do you have any squared paper? Do you want to see if you can do maths?

if you do draw some random squares - the only rule is that you have to follow the lines on the paper, so you might draww round a single square, you might draw a square that takes up half the page. It doesn't matter how big or small as long as they are square and on the lines on the paper. This would be easier to show you.

Now pick 4 squares you have drawn.

count how many small squares are in the first one, write that number down, then count the number of squares on one side and write that down nest to the first number.

Do the same with the other three squares. write the numbers under the first ones, so you end up with two columns, one of larger numbers and one of smaller.

OK now get a calculator, put the first big number in and press the square root key - the answer should be the same small number you wrote at the side of it.

Try it with the others.

Do you know what this means? It means you worked out the square root of numbers without a calculator. How impressive is that.

Loads of people are crap at maths. People's brains work differently. I failed my Maths 'O' level 6 times! (5 Us and an E). I then got a Double First Class Honours degree......and eventually went to 'Maths for Morons on a Monday Night' at adult education classes for a year to scrape a C grade GCSE so I could teach. (OK, so it wasn't officially called that). But the fact is, I'm still crap. School has to give me a date for my photocopying number (1815 - Waterloo, 1916 - Battle of the Somme) because otherwise I can't remember it. If you give me 2086 as a p/c number I will never, ever get it. I can't phone mobiles because I always transpose the figures. If your number starts 07596 then I will (guaranteed) type 057, shout Shit! and put phone down. I'll then do 079, shout Shit! again....I'll do 07569 (SHIT SHIT SHIT) and I'll keep going for about another four goes before giving up. I just don't get figures!

Sashh that is beautiful. truly it is. The more I read it, the morse sense it makes. It is expanding in my head.
I do believe I never nailed down the original concepts and as another poster said, got enraged with things. Everything else was so easy and then I would sit looking at the board and go "mmmmmmmm", or silence. Then bored then switched off.
Not much was explained at school in honesty. Alot of rote learning of everything. But no underpining of ideas.
Now what I am about to say may get me a kick up the arse from other posters but hey
In ireland, many teachers taught as they were Irish speakers or/and nuns. I am not sure how many of them could actually teach. One nun/teacher posessed a real love of numbers but it all scared me too much after a while and I could no longer receive anything positive about it. Then I got the message I was shit at it, further compounded by a bastard of teacher in secondary school who I had for 5 years. Not one person in our class passed our maths exams at Inter or Leaving Cert. Testament to what I wonder. Bitter? Me? With this face.

Having said that I did live in La La Land much of the tiime. I see my nephew do the same and see how he could float through school without making any impact on himself.

This post is very liberating I must say. Thanks for all the positive input

I had to comment because you sound exactly like me! My maths is appalling.

If I had to sit my G.C.S.E exam again, I would score 0. That isn't an exaggeration. I only got a good mark (on the lower paper) at the time because my older brother (who is brilliant at maths) coached me for a few days leading up to the exam.

Luckily, my Dh is a maths genius and uses it in his everyday work, so he helps the children with their maths homework. It does make me feel a bit . You are not alone!