![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I am *so* never doing a straight maths degree. Just spent a couple of hours on some perfectly trivial maths because I kept being swamped in all my stupid calculation errors. Grr. (Still haven't finished it - I gave up when I started crying and worrying my parents. I guess it'll get done (badly) on the train to school tomorrow - that's stupid of me too, but I don't care right now.)
I just don't know what to *do* about all these silly errors - after all, proofreading your own maths thorougly is impossible as proofreading your own typing for errors, at least it seems to be for me. Then again, it *isn't* - it's just these two questions I was trying to do tonight really that I managed to fill so full of errors I just couldn't seem to catch them all. But as that's the latest bit of maths I've done, and I can think of a few examples of similar from the past, of course I consider it to be an example of all the work I've ever done, despite the fact that if I was *that* rubbish at addition and multiplication I'd never have got A* at GCSE (although remember, I didn't actually get that by a lot...).
I guess it just frustrates me that everyone else has lots of trouble grasping the concepts, which I normally do pretty easily, but they still get better marks than me because they can add. Not being able to add (well, I can normally spot addition errors in the kind of numbers we're using, it's the multiplication and division with fractions in it that I think I know well enough to do automatically and don't) would be a really dumb reason to fail (where fail = get a B in a module).
I just don't know what to *do* about all these silly errors - after all, proofreading your own maths thorougly is impossible as proofreading your own typing for errors, at least it seems to be for me. Then again, it *isn't* - it's just these two questions I was trying to do tonight really that I managed to fill so full of errors I just couldn't seem to catch them all. But as that's the latest bit of maths I've done, and I can think of a few examples of similar from the past, of course I consider it to be an example of all the work I've ever done, despite the fact that if I was *that* rubbish at addition and multiplication I'd never have got A* at GCSE (although remember, I didn't actually get that by a lot...).
I guess it just frustrates me that everyone else has lots of trouble grasping the concepts, which I normally do pretty easily, but they still get better marks than me because they can add. Not being able to add (well, I can normally spot addition errors in the kind of numbers we're using, it's the multiplication and division with fractions in it that I think I know well enough to do automatically and don't) would be a really dumb reason to fail (where fail = get a B in a module).
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Re: Defeatist attitudes in maths
Date: 2001-10-04 02:19 pm (UTC)From:Re: Defeatist attitudes in maths
Date: 2001-10-05 06:38 am (UTC)From:GCSE maths in particular? By making everything so easy that our brains get turned off, by ironing over complications so that we lose the ability to think rigourously (even for applied mathematical versions) of the word. By allowing assumptions to pass unflagged, by concentrating on the most trivial maths until our brains lose the capacity to think hard.
That's the shortlist anyway.
You can tell I have a lot of respect for GCSE maths don't you?
(Don't get me wrong, a GCSE course is hard work and anyone acheiveing a string of good grades at the end deserves comendation for hard work and intelligence. Maths may be treated as siply adding lesson time in this calculation however).
Neil
P.S.: The same happens with A level physics unfortunatly, they can only assume GCSE maths and being as GCSE maths is pants ... A level physics struggles in many places.