Get over my math truama/phobia so it doesn't hold me back

my math phobia is loud, so I have to sidle up to this book. I finally finished the first chapter, though, and have to say it was very enjoyable. The pictures are charming and always make me smile from a little kid place. And I have gained a new understanding of fractions that I am happy to have. Why didn’t anyone explain fractions in this way when I was in school?

^{was it because my math teachers were sadistic weeneyheads?}

on this. I’m slowly reading The Number Devil. I still feel odd reluctance before picking it up, but it is a charming book.

Yesterday in a meeting at work, the topic came to budgeting for research studies. One problem that is always tricky has to do with budgeting for the cost of personnel time. How much time will actually be spent on a clinical trial and how much will it cost? And then how do you translate it into the common university current of currency, the FTE, which just means the percentage of annual salary. I mentioned that I had made a worksheet that I use for all of my budgets. I just work with the personnel, have them look over the study protocol and ask them, “how many hours do you think you’ll have to spend with each patient and how many hours do you reckon you’ll spend with paperwork for each patient afterwords?” Then I plug that number into my spreadsheet. The spreadsheet then figures out all the answers needed for the budget: the total FTE, the total personnel cost, etc., etc., etc.

People in the meeting all wanted my spreadsheet, so I sent it to them. About 30 hours later it occurred to me that this is an example of how I am perhaps not stupid at math after all, as I have been able to solve this problem that stumps all my colleagues and create a tool that everyone is now happy to have.

came in the mail today. What a beautiful book! It has such fetching illustrations. I am excited to read it.

Imagine that.

that this would be a good thing to discuss with my therapist.

Funny how I’m now looking at this in a new way. For years I’ve just viewed myself as hopeless when it comes to mathematics, and now I’m starting to think that may not be the case. Hmmm… I suppose this goal could rightfully go under Reclaim My Spirit From Each and Every Place I Have Ever Left It . . . the little kid who always scored well enough on the math aptitude exams to be placed in the advanced classes in school and somehow ended up learning in those classes that math = pain and is best avoided.

that I need to find some sort of self-teaching algebra book that will break things down into little, non-scary bites. Something with beautiful pictures would be lovely, but I’m sure that is asking for too much.

But, hey, I wonder if there would be a market for beautifully illustrated mathematics books? Why can’t the two be mixed?

Oops. I digress. heh.

My troubled history with math:

When I was about 11, I was in an “accelerated” math program. This meant that 2 other students and I sat separate from the rest of the class with our own workbooks and taught ourselves.

When I was 13, I was going through a really horrible time in my life. And I was as shy and painfully self conscious as I think it is possible to be.

So, we had taken mathematics tests, and my score put me in the advanced class. I still remember the teacher, Mr. Tate. He might have been crazy. At the least, he was very mean. One of his primary teaching techniques was to pick one student and humiliate that student. And he picked me. Being so shy, and also going through so much in my home life and being stressed to the breaking point, he would challenge me aggressively in class. When my brain would shut down and I would turn red and be unable to speak, he would ridicule me. I used to be terrified to go to school because of him.

After Mr. Tate, I started believing I was stupid in math, and I didn’t take any more math classes ever. My brain shuts down when confronted with math tasks. When I went to computer programming school, I scored much too poorly to get into the school, but they allowed me entrance because I did extremely well on the logic portion of the test.

My job today does involve some math, as I do a good bit of accounting. I tend to rely on my ability to think logically to get me through. If I’m ever in a position where I have to do calculations in the presence of another person, I’m sunk, because my brain just shuts down. I also don’t do well with math-related stuff if I’m tired or stressed.

I’m pretty sure this is a psychological block. I don’t know how to overcome it, but it would be helpful to get over it, plus I do wish I understood math. I even just wish I could stop thinking of myself as someone who is too stupid to understand math.

To be continued…

If I had a nickel for every time a teacher in high school told me that I obviously understood what I was doing on tests, I was just making “careless mistakes” I would have money to hire a god kind and patient math tutor/psychotherapist to get me back up to speed and through the eventual calculus and statistics classes I will have to take if I decide I want to go on in 5 years or so to do a doctorate in physical therapy. I may need the statistics sooner for work as I am slated to teach a research literacy class at my place of work for our massage students and I will need to be able to help them understand some basic concepts about critically evaluating clinical research and math is part of that. I vowed at 18 I would never take a math class again—and I haven’t. I was going to be an artist! I was going to write books and work in the theater for god’s sake. Who knew I was going to end up in health care? Shows just what you know when you’re 18. I even chose a college at the time that I knew was not going to force me to take a math class. Stupid. I thought distribution requirements were practically fascist at that age, but now I think they’re totally important. One of the important things about a liberal arts education is being forced to learn outside your comfort zone.

All that said, I think I probably have mild dyscalculia. I was always dropping symbols and flipping number order. “Careless mistakes.” I honestly couldn’t see what I had done wrong until I had it pointed out to me on the page. I would have all the steps down correctly, I just couldn’t get the right answer and that was all that counted towards a grade on the test. I did vastly better in plain geometry with all the visual proofs and less manipulating of numbers. Trig was a little better because graphing helped a little too, though I do seem to remember failing a a lot of those tests too. UGH.

Well, this is a long term goal really. I’m writing about it now because I realize I really want/need to take some chemistry courses to help me understand herbal medicine from a modern scientific perspective. I’ve been reading this really cool book that talks about all the chemical makeups of many herbs and how such things are functioning in the body and it is really complex and I need basic and biochemistry and organic chemistry to understand it fully. And I need the math for the chemistry.