Hiw bad am I at Maths?

[Creamcustards]

I feel I am terrible at Maths. If I express this, somebody will say “you have a B in GCSE / were a primary teacher, you can’t be that bad”.

I don’t feel like a “B” student though, and I only taught the basics to 6 year olds. In the adult world I feel lost and embarrassed when called upon to do sums.

If Maths were reading, I think I’d be a hesitant reader decoding the words, but not comprehending the whole paragraph and having nowhere near the “skim reading” fluency to take short cuts or see the overall picture.

With anithing other than very simple mental addition I have to mentally visualise it in columns like I was taught to in school. I do the same for subtraction, although I often make little mistakes as this is hard to do.

Was driving yesterday at 60mph, and my destination was 6 miles away. Took me ages (several minutes) to fingure out how long it would take me to arrive if I maintained my speed- 10 mins or 6 mins? I figured it out in the end (6 mins - right?) but it took me ages, you can imagine that simpler time / speed / distance sums are usually beyond me, mentally.

I get in a twist over my timesheet at work too. I work 7h 24 mins a day, which is written as 7.4 hours. When I see I have 120 hours of annual leave to take or 15.25 hours of flexi, trying to figure out how many actual days / hours / minutes I have is a bloody nightmare involving a lot of trial and error with a calculator.

I’m not a teacher any more and suddenly feel more aware of and embarrassed by my poor arithmetic. But how bad is is that I can’t do these things easily? I know poor mental maths is quite common, and calculators have a lot to answer for - am I “normal bad” for a professional person, or extra bad and should I be looking at getting myself into some sort of maths for adults course...

“How” bad am I 🙄 oops obviously not great at spelling either...

I’m probably similar OP but thankfully I’m not a teacher.

Mental maths is different from paper maths. The way to do subtraction in you head is very definitely not to try to visualise it using the column method. (I'd recommend the counting on method for numbers that are close together).

With the other example try simplifying the numbers first. You will probably instinctively know what you have to do, and then you can do it with the proper numbers.

I suspect you are no worse than average. Many people seem to struggle with manipulating numbers.

I was bad at arithmetic as a young adult. What helped me was doing puzzles, making a game of adding up the shopping as I went around the supermarket Etc.
Just keep trying and it will get better.

Op can you read an analogue clock/recall times table/mobile phone numbers/read a map?

There is dyscalculia - basically maths dyslexia. It runs in my family

Have a read as it might help you understand

ps. 60mph means 60 miles per hour.
So 60 miles in 60 minutes
So 1 mile in 1 minute
So 6 miles in 6 minutes.

By simplifying the numbers I mean this:
120 hours annual leave at 7.4 hours per day.
Too hard.
120 hours at 10 hours a day = 12 days right?
So you did 120/10 to get the answer.

Now you know you need to do 120/7.4 to see how many days leave you have.

I can read an analogue no problem.

Times tables I am okay with although again it’s through memory only so I’m not that confident and if I’m put in the spot I tend to panic and not be able to answer.

Map reading and remembering numbers - sort of mediocre. I have a terrible sense of direction, so developed basic map reading out of necessity or I’d be perpetually lost!

@TeenMinusTests Thanks! That’s the way I did the driving sum in the end, but it took me a long time to ‘click’ that’s how to do it.

Like the simplifying method, never thought of doing it like that before! Changing the answer back into actual hours and minutes would be a faff as well for me though, and I often try dividing 120 with 7.24 instead of 7.4, the logic of what I’m trying to do is easily lost, I have to self-check or preferably get somebody else my sums as I just don’t trust myself.

With a lot of these things if I sit down and think about it with a piece of paper and a calculator I can get there in the end, but my brain itself seems incapable of things other people can (?) do.

To be honest a lot of that stuff is repetition. If you regularly had to work out how long it would take you to get somewhere at a given speed, you'd know after a few goes how to do it. That's why kids have several maths lessons a week!

The fact that you eventually worked it out from first principles demonstrates that actually you have a solid understanding.

Anything you don't do regularly you'll be rusty at.
If you start forcing yourself to do maths every day you'll get more proficient.
I do the following for fun:

• factorising 3 digit exit codes
• if I am swimming 30 lengths I simplify the faction of far I have gone as I go along (so 1/30, 1/15, 1/10, 2/15, 1/6 etc)

OP, there's maths and then there's maths.
I have published mathematical papers (nothing too groundbreaking, just in my narrow area of interest, which is more applied maths). And have an undergraduate and a postgraduate degree in pure mathematics. And earn good money now from very mathematically heavy tasks.

With the daily arithmetics though, I am even worse than you. Honestly. Last time when I arrogantly calculated "in my head" how many tiles I needed for my bathroom, I had to pretend in the end I actually wanted to tile the back wall in the garage too - the tiler looked at me in complete disbelief when getting the delivery.

@TeenMinusTests wow! Both of those sound far too difficult for me...

@forinborin hehe oh dear! That makes me feel better though, thanks!!

I’ve been thinking about the social acceptability of struggling with maths vs other skills like sports or cooking.

I didn’t used to be too worried about it, I would happily admit I was poor at maths, much like I also admit to being terrible at sports (no hand eye coordination!!)

Then I was at a wedding the Christmas before last, we were doing the thing where you bet on how long the speeches last and I made some sort of mathematical gaffe with the time or the money (I can’t remember what it was now) I tried to make light of it and said I was dreadful at maths, and one of the men on the table just looked at me with an expression of horrified pity

I felt like I had just admitted to something really bad and that I should be ashamed / actively trying to improve. Ever since then I have been a bit paranoid.

I think you need to go back to basics and build up.
So with the time thing
1 hr = 60m
1/10 or 0.1 of 60m =6min
So
4/10 or 0.4 of 60min = 4x6min = 24m

0.25 of an hour = 1/4 of an hr =15m

If 1 day =7.4 hours and you have 120 hours leave what you want to know is how many lots of 7.4 are there in 120.
i.e.
120/7.4

Sometimes a rough calc is enough
So if you have 15.25 hours of flexi
1 day = 7.4
2 days = 14.8
So you have just over 2 days (2 days and 27 min 0.1+0.1+0.25 or 6m+6m+15m)

[quote Creamcustards]@forinborin hehe oh dear! That makes me feel better though, thanks!![/quote]
I am glad that it made you feel better.
Honestly, I've been in STEM all my life, and know hundreds, if not thousands, of people with advanced mathematical / scientific education, even some world-level stars. I have never bothered to research the question, but I'd say that in that group, the natural variation of "being able to momentarily calculate the change in the shop" is quite comparable to the general population. Anecdotal evidence only here, of course.
If anything, it is indeed more correlated with the ability to read maps / spatial imagination, as someone said upthread.

OP. I don't expect you to start factorising for fun, don't worry! Just you could do things like:

• look at your mile-ometer in your car - how many miles to get to the next thousand
• estimating value of grocery shop by rounding up/down as it goes on the belt (if you shop in person)
• average speed for a journey
• checking whether it is cheaper to buy 2 singles of something v a double

(You could try using divisibility rules on 3 digit numbers, you must know them if you taught primary?)

@Creamcustards Futurelearn (open university type courses but for any level!) do some great free online maths back to basics courses - have a look and maybe sign up to one. It is a great way of regaining your confidence in a subject.

Being awful at maths was always a source of shame for me. Numbers wouldn't stick in my head or stay still.
I sobbed to a teacher in year 4 after we finished the day on a practice maths tests. She told me don't worry, I wasn't That bad.
Finally in my last year of college, a teacher sent me for an assessment. Turns out, I have dyslexia and dyscalc, the numbers were never supposed to wiggle around on the page or fall out of my head the second I heard them.

After getting so many comments like "oh that's so easy, it's GCSE level" Now my brain shuts down at maths questions, I won't even attempt them.

It sounds to me like you lack strategies for tackling everyday maths problems. Disclaimer: I'm a maths teacher

It doesn't mean you're bad at maths. As with any skill if you want to improve then you need to practice (and if you don't do something for a while you often forget how).

It's not something you have to be embarrassed about though if you feel that way I'd suggest doing something about it so you don't feel embarrassed any more.

I know if someone asked me to do some of the harder A-level maths I'd struggle without revising or even relearning it first because I haven't looked at it or used it for years. I guess one difference is that I'm confident that I could do it and you sound like you aren't- you should be confident that you can relearn it.

I work flex time and my day is 7hours 24minutes but, my holiday is calculated as 7.4hours per day, it took me a long time to work that one out, then I had to explain it to a new manager.
I found watching 8 out of 10 cats does countdown has helped with with mental maths.

@TeenMinusTests

Anything you don't do regularly you'll be rusty at. If you start forcing yourself to do maths every day you'll get more proficient. I do the following for fun:

• factorising 3 digit exit codes
• if I am swimming 30 lengths I simplify the faction of far I have gone as I go along (so 1/30, 1/15, 1/10, 2/15, 1/6 etc)

Absolutely this. I do a mathematical challenge when doing anything like swimming or running on the treadmill. I also try to do basic mathematics like differentiation and integration or statistics just to keep myself current. It is really good to occasionally prove the quadratic formula and to do calculus on areas of overlapping shapes keeps my mind active.

@forinborin

OP, there's maths and then there's maths. I have published mathematical papers (nothing too groundbreaking, just in my narrow area of interest, which is more applied maths). And have an undergraduate and a postgraduate degree in pure mathematics. And earn good money now from very mathematically heavy tasks.

With the daily arithmetics though, I am even worse than you. Honestly. Last time when I arrogantly calculated "in my head" how many tiles I needed for my bathroom, I had to pretend in the end I actually wanted to tile the back wall in the garage too - the tiler looked at me in complete disbelief when getting the delivery.

I am enjoying picturing you trying to carry off ‘but of course I’m tiling the wall! Were you not allowing for that?’

I would absolutely agree, also have a maths degree and while not an academic I work in a maths heavy field. Doesn’t mean you can do these things quickly. Timezone conversions are my pet hate and they are just adding or subtracting! - global job and have family on several continents so really should know them inside out. If it’s 9am in london... it’s minus or plus? So 9am plus 8 hours is ... let me check that...

I have a 30 year old maths degree.
No way could I do any degree level maths now.
I've probably forgotten almost all A level maths too (though I'm hopeful I'd be able to pick it up again if I had to).
GCSE maths I'd be pretty confident of an 8+ with a few days notice to remind myself of higher content (have a DD in y11).

It's not surprising that people with B/C grade GCSEs are rusty if they don't use it. (Just think how the BODMAS threads go, and that is primary level.)

I have a Masters in maths from a top university, so people would say I am good at ‘maths’. I am great at algebra, logic etc but hopeless at arithmetic. Terrible at mental maths and times tables. Lots of top mathematicians are relatively bad at arithmetic.