Well i'm really awful at maths, and by awful i mean absolutely terrible.

I'm not really sure why this is, i do know that i feared it my whole life and avoided numbers like the plague, i did not keep up in any of my maths classes in any year of school, it probably took me a day or two to start lagging behind everyone else at the beginning of each year and after that i was always out of step, miles behind and completely lost.

It is true that i had a couple of pretty bad math teachers when i was at school, one with an accent so heavy i could understand every third word he said and he was there for three years, but that didn't stop at least half the class from passing their tests, and it hasn't meant that i started understanding maths on my own, so the problem is very obviously mine, for whenever i have tried to do maths it has been like butting my head against an invisible barrier, or walking into a gym and trying to lift the heaviest weights there, i find it utterly impossible.

Now in my advlt years I'm starting to wonder if perhaps i am mentally deficient in some way, my use of english is of a decent standard, and i was always described as intelligent but exasperating to teach by my teachers because of my constant day-dreaming, having won various literature and poetry prizes i surprised them and myself often in that department, and so they believed as a result that i could and should achieve things in other areas like maths that frankly i don't think i was capable of, and it made them angry when i failed to meet their expectations, and it made me lose confidence.

I left school with most of the teachers seeing me as a lost cause, and the reason i put this here is because i would like to ask you guys if you think maths is a subject that can be learned, or if it is a skill that requires some natural talent at least to begin with.

I know there are methods for improving your memory, a million and one ways to learn how to socialise, organise and manage your time, and many other self-help manuals on anything from delivering better speeches to overcoming fears, but are there any ways for a hopeless case like me to start to learn maths, is it in my capability? what if years of avoiding maths have shrunk my brain in that department? i hear that if you leave a skill unused it just shrivels away, perhaps this has happened to me.

Anyone know of a way i can start maths from scratch at my own snail like pace? or is it a hopeless case that is best left alone?

People are always good in one thing, bad in others. Instead of advocating polymaths, we advocate specialists and that applies beyond the academic education. Some are maths students, others are authors, some lawyers and so on. Then there are also the practical ones, the hockey player, the mechanic, plumber and construction worker. Of course, that doesn't stop one from pursuing other lines of work or education. If you really burn for mathematics, you can learn it even if one suffers from dyscalculia and so on.

Try this book: http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Algebra-Self-Teaching-Guide-Second/dp/0471530123/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1306941662&sr=1-1

Read the reviews, it seems like a great resource to learn math again. In fact I plan on ordering that book sometime in the future, which is why I had the link for the book. Back in high school I was decent at math, until I hit Precalculus at least, but I was never great at it nor did I care to be. Now that I've been out of high school for 2 years, and partially thanks to my awful memory, by math skills are pretty bad. So my plan is to order the book and re-teach myself Algebra someday soon, then actually practice it on a regular basis so that it will stick, instead of the way school taught me ("Learn it for this test and we'll never talk about it again").

I'm terrible at maths too, and resultingly terrible at programming.
I think it was mostly down to the way we were taught at school, if you didn't learn something you pretty much just fell behind, and because our classes were based on how good you were overall, rather than in an individual subject, I was constantly placed into the top maths stream, which was waaay above my head. This also resulted in a few maths geniuses who spoke English as a second language being placed into the top English stream, so it was basically terrible all around.

I'm not too bad at statistics though, because I was (and still kind of am, after finishing my current degree) planning on doing a biology major, a subject I enjoyed immensely.
So I guess it really boils down to 1: do you enjoy it; or 2: can you relate it to something that you do enjoy.

Thank you for the answers guys, definitely going to try this book, looks good :tops:

It is just a matter of practice and enjoying it, which is mostly what maths is. Just remember most of the maths they teach in school isn't that interesting (IMHO). There are however really interesting areas of maths.

Really? I can find plenty of examples of people who are good across disciplines. For example Douglas Hofstadter.


Once someone enjoys something, they spent a lot of time doing it. I spent far too long programming because I enjoy it. I also am fairly good at sailing and dabble in history. I would hesitate to say that I am good at one thing and only one thing.

True, that. There are several accounts of polymaths. But in general, not everyone is. Then again, you can always strive to be one.