Time for a poll

[chickenfeet]

I needed an excuse to use the user pic voted most popular by a random sample of sentient beings. I've also had some interesting on and off line convos and comments about math(s) recently so I thought what we really need is more ticky boxes. Lo, I bring you the great math(s) poll!

[Poll #826509]

Comments

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

many people hit the wall at different points

I managed to get a grade C at A-level, but really floundered at first year university accessory maths.

I'm in an odd category that doesn't really fit into your questionnaire, so I've had to fudge the answers there a bit. Basically I was OK at arithmetic at primary school, though was much better at English. But I really really couldn't do mental arithmetic, despite regular weekly tests. (Don't get me started on the "Kids these days can't do mental arithmetic. They should have regular tests for practice.") I could do what we called "problems" well though. I could work out what I needed to calculate, but usually made a mistake doing the calculation-- which is why I love spreadsheets!

In secondary school, we had a wonderful teacher. We had a maths club that I joined and I could see the fascination of the subject. I just couldn't do it! I was just about groping my way to some sort of understanding of one topic at the point where we were moving on to the next. Despite this, because I chose science A-levels, I took A-level maths. I obtained a grade E at first attempt, C after another year of studying, which was done mostly on my own because our Maths teacher had chosen the brand new maths-with-statistics option and Bury Tech, where I went to resit A-levels, was doing pure and applied maths. I opted to stick with stats, which I liked because I could see a purpose to it. Of course this was BC (Before Computers) or even calculators, so the syllabus will be quite different now.

Then, at university, I somehow scraped through the first year accessory course, but knew there was absolutely no way of going further.

However... I still find maths fascinating as a spectator sport. I've ended up married to a mathematician (A chartered mathematician, no less!) who, when I first met him, couldn't even rearrange equations and used to ask me to do it for him. G came to maths late, in his 30s, and did an OU degree, then a masters and now has almost finished a Ph.D. which is mostly maths, with computer modelling and hydrology and meteorology.