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<blockquote data-quote="Paul Farquhar" data-source="post: 8130862" data-attributes="member: 6906155">Twice that I know of. There may well have been dozens more sitting quietly at the back of a class of 32, not letting on how much difficulty they where having. That's why I prefer tutoring.That's the trouble with putting labels on things. It makes it seem like either/or. You either have it or you don't. Whereas in fact it's just the tip of a normal distribution. One of the crutches that can help people is rote learning of multiplication tables. When I was at school I had real trouble learning multiplication tables. Looking back, I now realise that was because they served no purpose for me. I could work out the answer faster than I could recall it. Most people's brains don't do that - for the vast majority of the population memorising multiplication tables hugely speeds up mental arithmetic. Of course, I had no idea of that as a child, and unfortunately neither did my teachers.I once had a student who could correctly solve complex equations in an instant. But they could not explain how they arrived at the answer.My own experience of maths was it was easy easy easy easy hard impossible - when I worked out chaos theory was involved in the unstable simultaneous equations I was using to calculate the distribution of matter in interstellar start formation regions. I couldn't do the maths, so I couldn't prove it, so I had to pursue a different career. When it comes to maths I'm near the top end of the normal distribution, but I'm not at the top!</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Paul Farquhar, post: 8130862, member: 6906155"] Twice that I know of. There may well have been dozens more sitting quietly at the back of a class of 32, not letting on how much difficulty they where having. That's why I prefer tutoring. That's the trouble with putting labels on things. It makes it seem like either/or. You either have it or you don't. Whereas in fact it's just the tip of a normal distribution. One of the crutches that can help people is rote learning of multiplication tables. When I was at school I had real trouble learning multiplication tables. Looking back, I now realise that was because they served no purpose for me. I could work out the answer faster than I could recall it. Most people's brains don't do that - for the vast majority of the population memorising multiplication tables hugely speeds up mental arithmetic. Of course, I had no idea of that as a child, and unfortunately neither did my teachers. I once had a student who could correctly solve complex equations in an instant. But they could not explain how they arrived at the answer. My own experience of maths was it was easy easy easy easy hard impossible - when I worked out chaos theory was involved in the unstable simultaneous equations I was using to calculate the distribution of matter in interstellar start formation regions. I couldn't do the maths, so I couldn't prove it, so I had to pursue a different career. When it comes to maths I'm near the top end of the normal distribution, but I'm not at the top! [/QUOTE]

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