MATHS PAGE

WELCOME TO MY MATHS PAGE 

A lot of students that i have asked seem to say that they hate maths, would rather avoid it or don't understand why they would need it in life. In this page i will be talking about why maths is useful for different reasons as well as some of the issues that people have when they think of this subject. There is also a video at the bottom of a researcher showing examples of why we hate maths. 

Why Maths?

Maths is essential for everyday life/ working for money. People always automatically think that they wont need it because their job role wont have anything to do with it. However i can guarantee that somewhere they will require it. 

For example with ICT  students is really important to be able to use different maths equations. Within computing students will find themselves doing binary (Hexadecimal, Octal etc). Now unless you have at least a basic skill with mathematics and are willing to try then you will find some serious problems with these methods. Especially when you start to get into Hexadecimal. 

However obviously not everyone is going to be doing computing but the same sort of thing applies. if you were going into construction then you would need to understand measurements and weight of equipment, if you doing hairdressing then you need to know the total of different hair styles against the age of the person, if you were doing a medical course then you will need to know what the measurements of medicine should be prescribed to one person etc. These are all things that people need to think about when choosing their life role and what skills they will actually need. 

Issues that some people have with maths 
in this little section i will be describing some problems that people (students) have with Mathematics. The main topics are; 
disabilities 
teaching problems 
fears

Disabilities 
there are many disabilities that can halt the learning process for students in mathematics. for instance i have dyslexia. The problem that i have is that i cant work with sequence of numbers, long division and using words and numbers together. i will say that i do try to work it out out but it can cause a lot of stress towards the working out, anxiety that i will get this question wrong because i don't understand it etc, which means that in a lot of cases i will avoid maths because  i know certain topics just don't function in my brain. 

I don't know if there are any other dyslexic students on my course but if you are then please leave a comment with any issues you have that is caused by the learning disability. 

Teaching Problems 
It doesn't always come down to the students though, sometimes its because they feel they have been presented with maths in the wrong way, could be that it was too complicated, teacher never motivated anyone to like the topic etc. For a student to enjoy maths there is a certain level of responsibility of the teacher to make it fun. 
If i were to find myself going into school and having the same boring lesson of maths over and over again where there was no fun way of learning or was just copying out of text books then, hell yeah i would hate going to the subject and would loose interest in the matter. However if i were going into a class where the teacher was funny, bright and worked really well with each and every student then that would motivate me to keep attending and could improve my learning skills. 
For instance although it is not Maths i have a lecturer called, 'George Dafoulas' who always makes the lesson fun but also serious to give me education. i enjoy this because it shows that the teacher wants to have a class where they enjoy attending and wants a good connection with all his students. 

Fears of maths 
Sometimes the reason we avoid maths is because somewhere we have this fear that its either, 'Pass or Fail'. If there is anything that everyone has in common it would be that no one likes to fail at anything. For some students this causes a lot of fear because they start thinking, "Oh god i don't what the answers are so i wont try, i don't want to look stupid in front of others!" etc. it could also be that we hate the sound of examinations where we are working against the clock to do equations. for instance i think i rarely finish an examination with all questions answered and have time left to check. This is because i fear the questions that are large mark answers, so i take a lot of time on them and then suddenly realize that i have been working on one question for most of the exam. 

Anxiety is also an issue with Maths. If the student is having problems with an equation then they can start to panic, especially if they are against a time limit. this causes loss of concentration, stress and can cause them to panic to the point they skip the question or just give up because they just can't take it. Now i don't have this per say but i guess the only help i could do would be to say, take a deep breath or a couple mins break to calm down, then just look over what you have done to see if you can get the concentration back. 

If there are any students that have any of these fears or know of any lecturers that have left them disliking maths, please leave a comment with what happened with you and if you did, how you accomplished your fears. 

below is a video from Youtube (please find reference below as well) that goes through different reasons why we hate maths. Enjoy and please leave comments. 

  

Reference to video- 

Taken at 14:51 pm. 11/12/2012 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58Srp1Wrj2s

Why We Hate Math: Karim Saleh at TEDxAUC. April 30 2012. Karim Saleh. TEDxTalks