Story time. I always struggled with math as a kid. School to high school, then didn't touch it much until Uni. Teachers typically couldn't explain things in a way I "got it" in a school setting. I had some success with a private tutor to get me over the line in high school.
Then at Uni I'm doing Computer Graphics, which included advanced (for me) math. I was panicked, and initially struggled until one of my good friends who was also studying the same course, and is VERY good at math, was able to answer my vague "I don't get it" questions, or at least guide me to more specific questions.
I think I'm quite a visual learner, I don't think at that time there was a concept of people learning "differently". Luckily my good friend was also a visual learner, along with also being very good at math. It was like someone was able to see how my brain worked and feed me information in a way it could compile. I became quite good at math after that.
You really need to learn how to learn. Its fascinating, but also horrifying when I now consider all the lives that have been negatively impacted because this wasn't understood, and people were led to believe they couldn't do something which maybe then really wanted to be able to do.
Glad to hear you were able to find a mechanism that clicked and stuck with it after that! The concept of learning styles for individuals though is a common myth
There isn't any evidence that individuals learn best to a single style and generally approaching learning from multiple facets is the best way for everyone to learn!
Thankyou, I'll be interested to understand more about what the latest thinking around this is.
I've always assumed some people are better suited to learning one way, while other another way. I've never been good at absorbing information or understanding (which I'd differentiate from knowing, rightly or wrongly) through reading, while I know many others who can easily do this.
It's more like the science has concluded that people don't have personal learning styles that help them the most. However it has also concluded that different learning styles all improve learning for all. So if you want to improve then you should try as many angles on the problem you can.
I'm using the term "visual" very loosely here. I prefer to be able to conceptually group and link things logically. He was able to explain things in a context that matched this, and greatly simplified things. Some things that I still suck at learning are foreign languages. Sometimes there are rules you can follow, sometimes you just have to "know", and sometimes the rules that apply in one case are the opposite in another. I'm amazed anyone can communicate effectively at all :-)
Sounds like your friend is an amazing tutor. Communication and teaching is indeed hard.
I really believe most people don't learn math because they don't get the teaching they need, not because math is somehow cognitively inaccessible for them (except in case of low iq). Lots of people learn language and grammar and are able to write strong texts with a high level of rational and logical thinking, but have not been able to learn math. These people clearly have the mental faculties for math, they just didn't get the teaching they needed. Math is a language for expressing thought, just like any language is, and these people have mastered other languages, so they have the prerequisites for being able to learn the language of math. Math is an especially hard language and it requires good teaching.
Then at Uni I'm doing Computer Graphics, which included advanced (for me) math. I was panicked, and initially struggled until one of my good friends who was also studying the same course, and is VERY good at math, was able to answer my vague "I don't get it" questions, or at least guide me to more specific questions.
I think I'm quite a visual learner, I don't think at that time there was a concept of people learning "differently". Luckily my good friend was also a visual learner, along with also being very good at math. It was like someone was able to see how my brain worked and feed me information in a way it could compile. I became quite good at math after that.
You really need to learn how to learn. Its fascinating, but also horrifying when I now consider all the lives that have been negatively impacted because this wasn't understood, and people were led to believe they couldn't do something which maybe then really wanted to be able to do.
If GenAI can help with that, I'm all in.