[jmspring]

Having just shipped the kiddo into the real world, she's leaning liberal arts (her and her mom suck at math), but she has a benefit neither her mom or I had - EU deal citizenship. She's going to do a year here to figure things out - she's also been thinking about Europe. University in Europe, for undergrad, is different than the US.

I think the large class model and a barrier of exams to advance makes sense in Europe. I've not been in the University of California system for years, but the school I went to - some classes didn't always hold up a level of academic rigor.

[genxy]

No one has to suck at math. Any human can learn the majority of skills.

[tjwebbnorfolk]

No one has to suck at any one thing, but one person can't possibly be good at everything. Time is finite -- everything you choose to do is a choice to not do some other thing.

[ajkjk]

nevertheless most people can be a lot better at most things than they are, in the same amount of time, if the education and culture around education is of higher quality.

[tjwebbnorfolk]

I can be better at programming than I am, and I do it for a living. At certain point, I'd rather spend time kayaking or playing chess. I don't know why this is some kind of education problem -- it's opportunity cost.

[plemer]

Have you ever taught?

[genxy]

I have! My favorite students were the 55+ returning education students that really wanted to finally learn algebra and calculus.

[vnce]

Yes and I standby genxy’s comment. It was always a question of motivation, not ability.

[genxy]

And motivation was often impeded by either trauma or not finding a way to make it relevant to the student. Those are prereqs for learning anything. The common denominator for people that are good at something is that they liked it, so they did it more.

[vasco]

I know plenty of people that went through an engineering degree with me that do not like math, but they are competent at all the way up to what an electrical engineer needs to know, which is not research level math, but what most people would call advanced. I would never say I "like" math for example but I've always thought about it as something important to learn and get decent at to succeed in life.

I have way more interest in history and philosophy but the way I figured is I can learn all of that on my own because all you need is to read. Math is actually hard so I better get "trained by someone" at it.

[Kaijo]

I’m similar to you, except to upgrade my practical math skills at college I did cultivate a “liking” for math comparable to other technical areas I pursue. Namely, I started reading popular math books and articles, watching math youtubers, solving recreational puzzles from math periodicals… It was like, half actual interest and half contrived interest, seeing if I could develop in that direction. One summer when I had a lot of free time, with the help of a mathematician friend, I worked through a few advanced textbooks and video lecture series beyond anything I strictly needed. Progress was real but agonizing, and then I promptly forgot everything. It turns out that just maintaining a mid-to-late-undergraduate-level understanding of applied math is all I can be responsible for. It’s a responsibility I attend to, but my brain is only so mathy. At some point it becomes a question of both motivation and ability.

[genxy]

You also don't know the people who didn't make it through, because for whatever reason they aren't able to learn something they weren't able to like. Glad you were able to make it work.

[bawolff]

I always find these types of explanations doubtful, because you can always dismiss someone of subpar ability as not trying hard enough or you could define trying hard enough in a way that is not defacto practical.

[maxbond]

My experience teaching is limited (but I have taught some, to be clear) but I have found learned helplessness to be the biggest barrier. People have varying aptitudes for different tasks, and varying aptitude and a finite lifespan does imply some people have a lower ceiling than others in a given subject, but humans are powerful general learners. They don't generally reach their ceiling in most subjects. The limit for someone "bad at math" is almost certainly self-fulfilling prophesies they internalized.

Speaking for myself I have in the last five years or so been learning I have much more of a capacity for making art than I had thought. My art is nothing special, but I am improving every time I practice. But when I was younger I thought that I was just good at STEM-yy things and bad at other things. Relatively speaking I am better at STEM-yy than art-yy things, and I'm probably worse at art-yy things than most other people. But I have huge room for growth and I think I will eventually produce some beautiful watercolors.

As an aside, I've also found that almost everyone thinks they're bad at math? My friends with PhDs don't think they're good at math but they've forgotten more than I know about it. I think I'm bad at math but I can prove a thing or two. My spouse thinks they're bad at math, and they can't do the things I can do. But a few months ago they needed to do some simple algebra at work, and a coworker said, "dang, I wish I was good at math."

Somewhere out there Terence Tao is saying he's alright at math but he has nothing on that Euler fellow.

[prerok]

Could not agree more. I also taught for some time and generally had good results, almost everybody "got it".

There was one person, though, that I just could not get anywhere with. Even after several private lessons. Turned out that somehow she convinced herself that she will never get it and never be able to progress. Even if she did get it right one week, the next week was as if that never happened. I found no way across that barrier :(

[skeletal88]

I also agree. Doing university sudies in stem fiels is just.. doing the work, grinding until you get it. I was not very good at maths but i managed to pass the courses that I had. Most of my fellow students didnt.

It is what differentiates stem fields fron liberal arts, in my biased view. You are either talented at maths, physics, chemistry or you just grind, study with thr books snd exercises, until you know enough to pass the exams.

Coming from gymnasium/high schoolit is very different. There the teachers tell you what to do, at uni you have to figure out yourself how you need to study to get the results.

US universities have been known in Europe for being a childs play, if you were any good at all in stem fields

[jmspring]

Yes.

[jmspring]

I think it is a matter of focus and aptitude. It also depends on instruction and approach. I took more math than I care to remember in college. Physics made calculus click. Upper division physics classes made some transform math confusing. David Huffman (yes, that one) taught a class in the CS department covering the same thing - from first principles - it made sense.

When the kiddo was dealing with common core stuff, I threw up my hands ... the approach made no sense, but sold text books.

[remarkEon]

This is not true. Math aptitude is not evenly distributed.

[badosu]

Good education, where one is imbued with motivation to learn and develop knowledge. That's not evenly distributed.

Anybody can learn math.

[remarkEon]

>Anybody can learn math.

I'm actually surprised that sentiments like this still exist. We work in technology, we've had enough contact with enough people to know that there is a difference between motivation to learn a hard technical field and the aptitude to actually do that field. "Anybody can learn basic addition" is mostly true. "Anybody can learn linear algebra" is not.

[badosu]

Well, I don't believe that's a fair conclusion based just on the fact we observe most people are "innumerate" and "hate maths".

Most people also never had the fortune of having someone describe why resolving quadratic equations is meaningful or how it developed.

An example of a somewhat dense but very approachable topic with good motivation is this book: https://web.osu.cz/~Zusmanovich/teach/books/visual-group-the...

You could say that not every adult, 2 deviations from the IQ median for the sake of rigor (we lose 2.5% of the population under), capable of reading might be able to follow it, and I would accept the argument. At the same time almost every adult was also indoctrinated in such a way they "hate maths", even though their only experience is dealing with numbers, operations and memorizing formulas that might eventually be useful.

I'm not sure this translates well, but the best allegory I could make to illustrate my point is "the fish does not think about the water".

[strken]

Great, I'll get on the phone to the local special school and let them know their non-verbal autistic students with IQs in the 50 to 60 range are to be enrolled in manifold theory next semester, and if they can't do it then badosu says it's all their fault because anybody can learn maths.

[badosu]

You are being disingenuous. Of course people with disabilities or severely deficient in cognition have innate difficulties that might hamper or completely preclude the development of mathematical skills.

The main point is that the educational environment most people have to deal with: public school in most countries, focused on rote memorization of formulas for passing tests, is the main factor on the incredibly inefficient and adversarial perception of most students and adults.

If you are able to understand something as "basic" as higher order effects in economics and societies, accrued from an understanding of rates of change from calculus, you are of course extremely privileged. On the other hand you are not some gifted unicorn with a special brain, you are just lucky (exceptions exist, but even they have to be somewhat lucky).

[Edit: grammar, ambiguity]

[strken]

I'll defer to the research[0], but I believe mathematical attainment is correlated primarily with IQ and mostly only correlated with maths anxiety, wealth, etc. to the extent that those things are proxies for IQ.

It's cruel to tell students that everyone can learn maths. Neither "everyone" nor "maths" is strictly true, you know it's not true, and most of the students also know it's not true. If you just told them "everyone in the class can improve" then it would be correct and uplifting!

Terrence Tao is a gifted unicorn with a special brain and this makes him lucky, as does his excellent education. Everything is luck when you look at it from enough of a distance.

[0] For example, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11532492/

[quadrifoliate]

Does EU dual citizenship help with university if you are not currently a resident of the EU?

I always thought the low EU-local fees for European universities were based on EU residency, not citizenship.

[luckystarr]

In most of Germany neither is required (Baden Württemberg requires non-EU citizens to pay 1.5k€ per semester). Commonly though you have to pay from 200 to 300€ administrative fees.

The harder problem is to enter Germany, but as you have EU citizenship, that's not a problem for you.

[andai]

What is EU deal?

[sillysaurusx]

EU dual citizenship

Edit: if anyone’s confused, there was a typo in the original post. I corrected it.

[canyp]

It's the new deal.