Many people can't do math. Is it because they are afraid of it, don't understand it or think they don't need it?

 

  Yes, both of those reasons. 

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That kind of math? You're right. Very few people can do that kind of math. 

I'd say I'm afraid of it, mostly. Also, I don't think I need that sort of math. I used to know a lot more than I know now, but nothing anywhere near that Good Will Hunting crap you posted. Yikes! 

Math is like a woman -  Although it's complicated and makes little sense, it's hard to live without.

People have different aptitudes. 

it's because it's hard 

I like math.  But I do not need anything in you image. 

They just need taught properly. 

I can't play pool.  I'm not afraid of it.  I do understand it.  I don't need it. 

Math.  I can do everything that I need to be able to do.  The rest, even though learned at one time, is in a safe permanent resting place.  Trig was the highest math class I took....and I only took  (in college) because I wanted to take a computer programming course and it was required.  I still don't know why, but...   That was interesting but I got my lifetime fill of it in one quarter.   Actually, everyone was supposed to take calculus but I started university in the summer and they found a mistake in the catalog which meant I did not have to take calculus or a couple other courses because they were left out of requirements section.   The people who started in the fall felt cheated.   That is the one time when lucky landed on me.  I didn't need high-level math or the two sciences I was able to skip to do a wonderful career in telecommunications and become an attorney. 

Everybody needs math. Even kids can (usually) count change.

Higher maths is only required by some - as a quantity surveyor I actually did use integral calculus, architects get weird sometimes and it's up to the QS to work out how much this odd shape is going to COST.

I like the cartoon, but responding to your suggested reasons in reverse order:

See no need for it -

That's usually not a matter of aptitude but of attitude: simple refusal to bother to learn it. However, it is also a matter of how it is taught - is it anchored to real life or merely an abstract set of abstruse puzzles for an examination? If taught as the latter, and especially if taught in a dull manner, it won't encourage those already sceptical about "ever needing it".

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Don't understand it (my problem)  -

That  can be by low aptitude (me!), but may also result from poor teaching not helping the student see how it works (ditto).

It might work if a different approach is used, such as tying the particular problem area to a simple, physical thing or to a branch of maths the student does find easy.

For me, real things in my work and my hobbies decades after leaving school, led to my finally realising what logarithms and differentiation are, and thus being able to understand them. (I should say that when logs were necessary as arithmetical tools, I could use them as such, but I did not know how they work.) 

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Fear of maths - 

I don't think I have met anyone who claims to be afraid of it, and I wasn't either; but there are plenty who admit finding it difficult, and a few who try to bluff their way out of that by rather forlorn attempts to laugh it off.


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Archerchef reminds me of an little argument I had with one of my nephews who claimed having a calculator means you don't need to learn maths. I asked him, "Ah, but even a scientific calculator only does the arithmetic. You still have to know the mathematics to know what to ask it to work out and in what order!" He could not answer that.


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Incidentally, Thriftymaid's experiences bear out something I have often noticed over the years, that the US education system seems to break Mathematics topics (algebra , trigonometry, etc.)  into discreet curriculum subjects as isolated from each other as History and French, say.

My experience was that the UK's system treats Maths as a curriculum subject in its entirety,  in which each topic is a component of the single Maths syllabus - and of course there are many over-laps, particularly for algebra as that is the "language" for the whole discipline. So when you take the examination at the end, you don't take an Algebra Exam, a Geometry Exam, a Trig. Exam... You take a Mathematics Exam which even if in 2 or 3 separate papers, can and usually does cover all topics; sometimes with questions combining two or three topics.  

As far as I know this is still the case, and certainly was about 25 years ago when I took a school maths course in evening-classes as a refresher for work reasons.  

That course, by the way, introduced me to Matrices I had never previously even heard of. Why they are in the school syllabus I have no idea, for they appeared a singularly abstract field with no stated connections to any other topic, and certainly not to practical applications. Consequently I failed utterly to understand them, though I learnt elsewhere they are used in very high-level scientific calculations and computer graphics programming. (Matrices are not new though - their history is very old, with a lot of refining and development in the 19C.) 

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