Is it because your brain is like liquid you can't hold on to one concrete thing at a time?

maths is a broad subject, which parts are you suggesting they suck at?

I'm talking about elementary stuff, like when people hate "fractions", "word problems" etc. I don't understand how anyone can have this defect when other abilities are normal?

math phobia.

http://www.mathacademy.com/pr/minitext/anxiety/

i know someone who probably has a 120+ IQ, but he can't do algebra.

sounds like a gay excuse.

i think its lack of motivation

You need to conquer that stuff early in life, otherwise every time you encounter math it's...
DERP.

too many rules to remember and abide by. They say that Chinese Mandarins excel to the dynamics of the language transferred over.

It's important to have people who can teach math early on in a kid's life. Although I lived in the States when I was a kid, my parents talked to me in Korean so I originally had a hard time adjusting to school. I learned math from my mom. A lot of the kids who were good at math in my class said that their parents helped them out. But math in the US elementary and middle schools is very easy. The students from Korea and Japan already knew what we were learning. It started to change for me when I moved to Korea. I already learned everything in math there was to know in American high school by the time I went back to the US. I wasn't even a good student in Korea. My sister and my younger cousin also suffered from bad grades at math in Korea. But their experience made them familiar to math. Their good grades in the US gave them confidence.

I have tutored basic Algebra and was an accountant for years, so I don't really suck at math. But in school I barely passed my math classes. Testing and doing are just not the same.

But there are some people who just can't grasp math, the same way some people are not good public speakers or accomplished chefs. Its not necessarily stupidity, but different skills.


I have tutored basic Algebra and was an accountant for years, so I don't really suck at math. But in school I barely passed my math classes. Testing and doing are just not the same.

But there are some people who just can't grasp math, the same way some people are not good public speakers or accomplished chefs. Its not necessarily stupidity, but different skills.

Because here in England kids have this terrible attitude of "I CANT DOOOO IT!!!" They dont even try.

in the west the attitude towards academics is to "go with what you enjoy".. as oppose to "you can do it if you work hard". that's why the US economy is hurting, too many kids wasted their student loans on useless majors like history, philosophy, sociology etc..

Most people don't need math for their jobs, but math intuition is important for personal finance. Americans are always in debt and they spend money on worthless things because they lack math intuition. This is true even for national policy. They have technocratic skill but lack basic intuition, for example they don't wonder how much a war should cost and what should be the gain, they just keep throwing money into a hole when they make these collective decisions. For Asians it's very easy to not overspend, to appropriately allocate financial assets. We don't have to go to seminars, we just use our superior quantitative brain.

Japan is a special case that has messed up national finances. I'm not sure why but I wouldn't be surprised if they got some dumbing down American influence in their politics. Japanese consumers are responsible, their politicians are weirdly inept.

I agree. It's a mental discipline you need to learn early on, otherwise it will never come easy.

I always liked math.