DD13 says she hates math and professes to be bad at it. She is taking Algebra 1 and doing okay, as far as I can tell (this teacher is a bit odd in how she grades--I suspect her grade is inflated). She has very low self confidence as far as math and self directs towards the humanities.

However, for as long as she's been able to talk, she has been interested not in school math or math calculations, but funny little math ideas. What I want to know, because math is 100% not my thing, is whether DD should be encouraged to persevere with math til she gets to "big math"/interesting math. Here is an example of the kind of "math rule" DD tends to come up with when she should be paying attention in class. I have NO idea if this demonstrates math aptitude or is just a pretty obvious thing. my brain does not in any way work this way so to me it is impressive, but on the other hand I can see how it's just a basic identity, perhaps? I will NOT be offended if you tell me it is nothing special. What do you think?

x + y = (x squared-y squared)/x-y

Because of the order of operations, "x-y" should be parenthesized, so you have

x + y = (x^2- y^2)/(x-y)

This is a consequence of x^2 - y^2 = (x+y) * (x-y), which is an important formula which I guess would be taught in Algebra II. She has probably has some math talent if she is deriving the formula she did while in Algebra I.

Oh yes, I forgot the parentheses. (my fault--she had them!)

x^2 - y^2 is a difference of squares, the factoring for which is taught in algebra 1. It's possible that your dd figured that out before it was introduced in class.

Regardless, I'll suggest that yes, of course your dd should be encouraged to persevere with her "funny little math ideas." You never know where that might lead.

My son struggled very much in math until he heard a mathematician on public radio talking about number theory and creativity expressed in math. His teacher at the time said "let him do whatever he will do", so he did number theory unit in the grade level and then continued flying through math.

I think we underestimate the significance of social pressure. My sister was average in math, had a terrible math teacher in high school and struggled. I was 6 years younger and somehow came to the conclusion that *I* was bad at math. I had D's and F's in math in high school - at first from a poor parochial middle school with poorly-trained teachers and curriculum outdated by a generation - then from giving up. As adults, my sister is pursuing an accounting degree (surprise!) and I took a college math class - skipping on class in the normal progression and coming out with an A- anyway (surprise!). My sister and I succumbed to beliefs that we were incapable of learning math. The only thing we actually lacked was self-efficacy.

My sister, my son, and myself all struggled with our thoughts about our abilities rather than our actual abilities. Perhaps a little nurturing and encouraging will help your daughter to discover whatever she is capable of.

It would indeed be impressive if she self-derived, but in AOPS this is Algebra I and not II. Do check what they are doing in their math class.

My older son thought he was "bad at math" for three years (4th-6thgrades) because of a random innocent comment by a teacher at the same time he was winning contests for math, getting highest score on state tests in math and other indicators that this wasn't true. I also think because he didn't know how to do each math skill before someone taught him, he thought he wasn't as good at it as other academic areas. But he really thinks logically and mathematically about most stuff he comes across and has since 3rd grade....percentages, probability, fractions are part of his thinking and conversations about life....not how I think at all.

My second son is the kind of kid who you teach a foundation concept and then asks about the next logical concept as well as three concepts down the road. He might not have it all figured out but his mind is just whirling on. You can give him an above level test and he can "muscle through it" pretty decently using what he does know and what he thinks the next higher stuff is. Confidence has never been a problem with this one in any area.

I've ranted extensively on this topic before, so I will try to keep it short for a change

The stuff they do in most elementary schools isn't math. It's basic computation, usually taught extremely confusingly and badly by people who are scared of math and want to avoid it as much as possible. In some curriculums, it's more of a language arts writing exercise than a math one. The unfortunate result is tons of kids who think they hate math and/ or are bad at it.

I suspect someone who loves/ is good at math is someone who likes to think about patterns and relationships and why things work and what cool things can you do with that. But they don't usually get to do any kind of conceptual math thinking at school. So if she miraculously thinks she might like math despite it all, find her some Numberphile videos, Martin Gardner books, etc, and let her wallow in math presented by people who love math and want to share the joy they find in it. THEN she can decide if it's for her, and maybe discover the joy that is AoPS.

I wondered this, but it wouldn't be much like her to "fake" this to impress us. She is not a pleaser in any way. Still, you do have a point. She is doing Common Core Pearson Alg 1. It may well be that she was not taught THIS, but something that suggested it somehow.

She has fooled around some with math contests etc. Her scores are not bad, but not worthy of going further, if you know what I mean (as in, she can kinda hang at MATHCounts at a gifted magnet school, but there are also those kids who are doing much better) and anyway she doesn't want to. She doesn't really like *problems.* It's a fascination with discovering patterns...always has been.

For what it's worth, my DS8 is younger, but also very into discovering patterns. He noticed on his own looking at a multiplication table that there are two boxes diagonally adjacent to every perfect square that are one less than that number, which did make me think of this thread. I didn't have a pencil and paper to show him at bedtime, but I did want to work through multiplying out (x+1)(x-1) so he could see why. Maybe this weekend.

I think that regardless of your DD's level of "math talent," you should still encourage her to presevere with math throughout middle and high school. Tell her that at a minimum, she should not close any doors. DD13, who will be entering high school in the fall and recently had to do a lot of soul-searching in selecting, applying to, and testing for magnet programs with an eye to college options further down the line, finally gets it. She is actually taking the AMC10 today without me twisting her arm. Don't get me wrong, she has not prepared beyond trying one of last year's test and may at most reach the Achievement Roll cut-off but that is not the point.

As for your DD, part of math talent is math interest and the fact that she voluntarily took time to factor an important algebraic identity says a lot. It doesn't really matter rather this identity is Introduced/memorized in Algebra I or Algebra II, she is ahead of the game either way.

Updating this with more head-scratching on DD and math. She recently bombed a unit test in Algebra and says she wants to self-demote a track in math upon reaching high school (this is something she can do without much embarrassment; basically, she would take Geometry twice, in 8th and again in 9th, but with a different teacher and at a different school). At the same time, she recently let it drop that she just missed the cut off for the school math team. (They select 4 students, based on MathCounts test results. I had assumed she had recently started going to MathCounts only because a BFF of hers goes.)

I had been inclined to agree with the change in tracks because she is a high-stress young critter, and her intended high school is very challenging. My concern is that I don't want her to turn herself away from a science and math track too young due to "low-confidence girl" issues. She is VERY, VERY good at science, but not passionate about it. Unfortunately, she is not passionate about school, period, right now, though fortunately music and writing are igniting her.

Have you spent much time working on study skills and exams skills with your DD? Maybe it's not her maths that's letting her down in her maths exams, but her time management, not showing working, mis reading questions, going too fast and making silly mistakes, not going back to check her working, etc., etc.

ultramarina, this is undoubtedly a really complex situation with a whole lotta stuff going on. What really jumps out at me, though, is:

(a) she says she's not good enough for the highest math track

vs.

(b) she was in the top 5 MathCounts scores.

Whatever is going on, it feels like inability to handle the class is more excuse than issue. Random possibilities might include...lack of confidence. perfectionism. underlying hidden learning issue. social issues and self-image, in general and/ or around the kinds of kids in higher level math. It's hard to tell if this is normal teen angst, or at least typical gifted issues, or something a little more hidden. But from what you'e said, she likes thinking about math. She's very good at it. And she's avoiding it. What is she actually avoiding?

Would some high profile examples of girls/women in math and science help her....the girl from wonder years wrote a book (not sure how good it is) and the girl from blossom and Big Bang theory has videos (vlog?).

Another possibility is a poor teacher fit. One of my DD's friends (who is probably DYS material but has not been tested) is currently failing algebra because of a teacher who does not give partial credit for careless errors in the middle of a problem. You are right or you are wrong, and if you are wrong, it doesn't matter whether you don't understand the algorithm or you had a brain fart and said that 5x7=45 during the last step.

Wow. I would fail too.

That is unusual. Does she give full credit for correct answers with no work shown?

No as far as I know, but of course this is all hearsay from her and her mom.

She's big on careless errors, for sure. She tries to squeeze all her work in tiny spaces, which makes me berzerk. She loses a lot of points for arithmetic errors, misread numbers, missing negatives, missing graph labels (this year's teacher dings them every time they don't label x and y axes!), not showing work, etc. It is very rare that she loses points for not getting a concept. If I ask my DH to work with her, he says, "She understands this." And yet.

She is also slow. She reports that this is a problem just in math.

Grades are all over the map, btw. She will get a 98 and then a 75.

ultrmarina - do you have a sense whether she is deliberately rushing, in say, a perfectionist if-I-don't-try-I-can't-actually-fail kind of way? Or if she might genuinely struggle to do all the things you list above? Because that description sounds a lot like my DS, with major math ability but attention and writing and retrieval issues getting in the way of his output. (An interesting marker of the attention aspect is that he rarely makes careless mistakes on the really challenging questions. But reading his own writing is always a problem. So is retrieval of math facts.)

She quite possibly has attention issues. Her handwriting is fine, but small, and as I said, she has this weird compulsion (I use that word intentionally) to fit everything on one page and not use extra paper. She still does things in her head that she should not do in her head. I notice that there isn't an obvious pattern as to what she gets wrong on tests--it's not like she just gets the hard ones wrong. She frequently increases a somewhat mediocre test score by getting extra credit points (her teacher puts brain teaser/logic questions on the tests for extra credit--she always does these!)

Let's see if I can add some more background. Without sounding braggy, DD is generally good at everything. Because she has always expressed resistance to/lack of interest in math, we have set it aside as "not her thing." I suspect that if she weren't all-around high ability, we would have paid more attention to the sparks in this area that flash from time to time. It's of interest that her standardized test scores in math are always higher than in reading (not that those are not high, but math scores are always 99%). She may just score higher on math SAT than verbal. But she thinks of herself as a writer and artist. BTW, though, she loves Vi Hart.

My son was struggling in math because he was doing things in his head that he shouldn't. Why? He's concerned about forestry and wasting trees by writing out his work. We went hiking/camping in a managed/logged forest to show him that there are viable alternatives to clearcutting that are commercially used. And we check for recycled and/or sustainable sourced stamps on paper products. For a while he was using a white board to show his work too. He shows his work now an is doing well in math.

Any chance her math difficulty / paper usage difficulty has nothing to do with math at all?

Are you sure you aren't talking about my DD? I swear this sounds just like mine. Sigh. What is it about fitting all the work into a teeny tiny space?? Both DD's had this horribly long math packet last night - hours long - and DD11 was making math errors because she couldn't read her own problems. I'm not sure how the teachers read her work. These math sheets give about an inch for a complicated algebra problem. I suggested she use another piece of paper, and you would I have thought I was suggesting something illegal.
My DD (diagnosed with ADHD but questions remain) also is much more interested in writing and art. She always says she hates math (and then gets A's despite the hatred).

One of mine went through a phase of trying to fit everything into minuscule spaces as well, with a minimum of writing. We had repeated conversations about math as a language, and as communication, and eventually got to the point where sufficient work is shown--though there is still a tendency to write just a bit smaller than a presbyopic adult can quite read comfortably. And yes, it was about wasting paper.

Whiteboards have been very helpful for both my kids, for different reasons. DS does all his math on one (sometimes two for a long problem). When it's work for submission (such as an on-line course he took), we take photos of the whiteboard as he goes, paste them into a big PDF, and submit that electronically. No trees die! There's no reason this can't be done at school - except stigma, alas. It worked great for DD when she was young, though - teacher just pulled out her phone and took a picture every time DD finished something.

Thank goodness for bonus challenge questions - DS always gets them easily, and they usually make up for the all the marks he lost to careless errors (at school he still does math on paper; it's the only thing he doesn't keyboard).

He too does do way too much in his head. The only solution I ever found to that was AoPS, where the complexity of the problems actually requires writing out the details to avoid errors, and where the proofs that need to be submitted in the course became an enjoyable challenge for him to produce (much to my surprise). Some of contest math we're playing with at home is getting complex enough that he's starting to make mistakes because he isn't writing enough down. That's hitting him where it hurts, and doing far more to convince him to write down more steps than anything I could ever say. Still, we work the problems side-by-side and I'm always writing at least three times what he does... sigh. Mathematician I'm not. All that to say, the willingness to "show your work" depends a great deal on being given work worth showing.

DS in 8th grade now taking Honors Geometry did this in 6th in Algebra I. He got better in Alg II in 7th mainly because the solutions were getting much bigger, taking up half the page. I think he had no choice.

In Alg I he struggled a bit at the start of the year. The teacher seemed to give him a hard time. After about 6 weeks the teacher had to leave due to health issues. A new teacher replaced the old teacher and it was like night and day. He said the new teacher would explain homework rather then just go over class work and send you on your way to do your own homework. The new teacher would also give partial credit on test for silly mistakes but expect you to correct and turn in all the problems you got wrong.

I am in the process of making laminated graph paper and blank sheets as they are less bulky to carry to activities. I also finally found small very fine tipped whiteboard markers with erasers on the end. Ds7 puts a laminator sheet on his workbook and does calculations in the blank space or on top of pictures or other problems. Not much good at school but great for homework.

Yes!! DD is also freaked out by killing trees and gives this as a reason to fit it all on one page. And yes, if I do a problem alongside her, I write down like 3x as much. And now I have a 9yo doing the same thing. (me and his teacher both: "Where is your work?" DS: "What work?")


It doesn't smear?

Several of the comments show how environmentalist zealotry can cause problems. Someone who understands the free market will know that we won't run out of trees because profit-seeking companies will plant more trees as long as there is demand. I have explained to my children why The Lorax is abominable agitprop.

It is fine for working. It needs a more substantial clean a couple of times a week as the laminator sheets don't clean as well as whiteboards. We used the laminated graph paper last night and it was great.


Lost the quote but it was about smearing.

I'm visiting here after a long absence and thought I would update that DD is taking geometry this year and says she loves it. Have never heard "love" connected with a math class before. (She also says the teacher is great, which could be why.) I have also been told that even teaching geometry is now considered outmoded, though? Like, the rigor of a typical geometry class is in question? Thoughts on this?

I had a lot of conversations with my AP/honors math peers about geometry when I was in school, because it was the only math we took that sorted people into distinct camps of loved it (me) or hated it (most of them). The major complaint of the second camp was proofs.

I've treated this forum to a couple of rants already about how incredibly important geometric proofs are in a formal education, since we don't really teach anything specifically related to logic outside of it. There have been some complaints of proofs being watered down, or eliminated entirely, including on this forum.

http://giftedissues.davidsongifted....ll_vent_about_geometry_c.html#Post119879

I'm looking for relevant articles and not finding anything, but the fact that this expert felt the need to write an argument about NOT skipping proofs in geometry class is strong support that it happens all too frequently: http://www.mathgiraffe.com/blog/proof-that-proofs-belong-in-geometry

Geometry is the poor stepchild of the Math sequence continually being shorted in favor of more Algebra or Statistics.

If you look at a typical sequence nowadays its heavy on definitions/taxonomy, trig, analytic i.e. Cartesian geometry at the expense of classic Euclidean topics.

Example From the CC standards: (this curriculum will tend to do proofs during only parts of a few units for the entire year)

Units Includes Standard Clusters* Mathematical Practice
Standards

Unit 1
Congruence, Proof, and Constructions
• Experiment with transformations in the plane.
• Understand congruence in terms of rigid motions.
• Prove geometric theorems.
• Make geometric constructions.

Unit 2
Similarity, Proof, and
Trigonometry
• Understand similarity in terms of similarity
transformations.
• Prove theorems involving similarity.
• Define trigonometric ratios and solve problems
involving right triangles.
• Apply geometric concepts in modeling situations.
• Apply trigonometry to general triangles.

Unit 3
Extending to Three Dimensions
• Explain volume formulas and use them to solve
problems.
• Visualize the relation between two-dimensional
and three-dimensional objects.
• Apply geometric concepts in modeling situations.

Unit 4
Connecting Algebra and Geometry through Coordinates
• Use coordinates to prove simple geometric
theorems algebraically.
• Translate between the geometric description and
the equation for a conic section.

Unit 5
Circles With and Without Coordinates
• Understand and apply theorems about circles.
• Find arc lengths and areas of sectors of circles.
• Translate between the geometric description and
the equation for a conic section.
• Use coordinates to prove simple geometric
theorem algebraically.
• Apply geometric concepts in modeling situations.

Unit 6
Applications of Probability
• Understand independence and conditional
probability and use them to interpret data.
• Use the rules of probability to compute
probabilities of compound events in a uniform
probability model.
• Use probability to evaluate outcomes of decision

DD is highly visual and artistic. I'm guessing this has something to do with her reaction so far.

I am not mathy, but remember enjoying doing proofs.

Well, you say you're not mathy, and in your OP, you say your DD hates it and professes to be bad at it. My DD says the same thing your DD does.

I'm pretty good at math, and I have trophies and a career to support that.

In helping my DD with her homework, I'm seeing someone who intuitively grasps the concepts, sometimes struggles converting word problems into mathematical language, and frequently messes up a problem by doing something stupid like dropping a sign or reading 3 and computing 8. Her grades are usually low As as a result.

Ummm... everything I see in DD looks VERY familiar. She's a full year accelerated and in the honors math course, her peers are always coming to her for help, and her grades are very good. So... why does she think she's bad??

Girls are weird.

Could be more visual/artistic thing. You have to be very pleased.

LOL..girls are weird.

My ds took Honors Alg1 then Honors Alg2 the following year. In 8th grade it was honors Geometry. He loved it even though all of testing break downs (NWEAs, Explore, ACT) always rated him lower in geometry than algebra. He learned more and had a more enjoyable year in geometry by far. Never minded all the proofs, and there were tons.

He said his teacher rarely used the supplied text book for discussion.

This year honors pre calc. He seems to be just putting in his time.
New School and a teacher who is just "meh" at best so far.

your daughter sounds like me ...I hated math - loved geometry and even trigonometry - I never did well with computation because of my dyslexia but once we could use a calculator I was fine - I took an IQ test the year before I entered college and had a good laugh because ... apparently I have a math talent- and had abysmal grades in math ... believe me - nobody would have guessed ... So yes ... completely possible to have a talent and not excel at the correlating subject in school.


I have a child with a math talent and no interest in math whatsoever ( and we tried to make it interesting ) My son can breeze through math but if he had a choice ... he would rather do something else. They tried math competitions and such and he hated it - he doesn't mind math but ... it is by no means an area he is passionate about.

Talent doesn't equal passion ... I love art and music and I have no particular talent for it. ( none whatsoever in fact ;-) )

girls are weird -- I'm a relative newcomer to this forum but I thought JonLaw was the resident deadpan humorist :-)

Also true. But Dude was on sabbatical or something.

My boys can do school math...factor polynomials....good...test on polynomials...100%. Good. Look at world in a mathematical way, yes. Make connections between math and life yes.

But do they live, breathe and dream math....no. Contest math whizzes? No. Do they find the beauty in math, no

And because it is something the actually have to work a bit at and learn (and don't know it BEFORE the teacher teaches it) they feel, or at some point have felt "bad in math". 100% A on report cards constantly yet they feel bad at math.

The truth is they might not be Cal tech or MIT bound good at math, but they are "smarter than the average bear" good at math. The act disappointed In their math sat score like they will need to take remedial math in college when depending on major my senior will have credit for AP statistics (5) and AP AB Calculus and BC Calculus (assuming he does well). They are globally gifted with specific talents and preferences more in the verbal, language, humanities which makes them feel "bad in math".

I have worked hard on dispelling this bad in math issue for 7 years.