Most Difficult Thing About Math

It would be the fact that you have to be careful at every step of your solutions. If you miss out one item, it wil affect the entire process and the final result. It may just be a mistake in one letter or number but it will be able to create a totally different result.

I think you have to be very attentive to details in order to do well in Math.
 
wander_n_wonder said:
It would be the fact that you have to be careful at every step of your solutions. If you miss out one item, it wil affect the entire process and the final result. It may just be a mistake in one letter or number but it will be able to create a totally different result.

I think you have to be very attentive to details in order to do well in Math.
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I second this. Also, at the university level, it can be hard to do proofs at first. I found that it took a few semesters to really get the hang of it. Since there isn't always an obvious starting point, it often feels like you are just trying things at random in order to see if it might work out. It can be frustrating until you start to get a knack for what sorts of things to try.
 
I'm not good in Math, and I don't think I actually "hate" it.

But I think the most difficult thing in Math was to learn it in a classroom setting. Being in a classroom means having to adjust to whatever speed the class adapts when learning lessons - and because we're supposed to follow a calendar of lessons, this means we need to move on to another topic before actually mastering the last. This means everyone has to adjust to the others that got the topic already.

I think the thing I don't like about Math is that everything has an answer that cannot be refuted. I'm more on the, "you either memorize the thing or you explain it in your own terms" - but when it comes to definitive solutions, I find them hard to find because everything has a process, and each process leads to only one answer. I find it hard to adjust in an environment where everything is narrow and constricted.
 
The most difficult aspect of math that I saw was the ability to think abstractly about problems. This was the sole factor I saw separating my peers into the "mathy" and "not-so-mathy" camps in high school. I fell some place in the middle, able to think abstractly but out of practice and unable to apply mathematical concepts.

Learning to explain your answers seems like a joke in lower years of elementary algebra and numeracy, but it becomes the true show of skill in high school. You start to learn how to apply a broad concept to a very specific problem, and I think that's where math becomes really difficult.
 
I think the most difficult aspect in Math is memorizing formulas. There are math problems easy to solve if you just know the right formula for it. Also no room for small mistake cause just a missed point could give you wrong answers.
 
The most difficult thing about math for me has always been abstractness and solving the abstract problems. You must be able to think in some other dimensions which has always been the biggest problem for me. Also I've never liked to solve problems where only one little mistake leads you to an absolutely incorrect result.
 
The calculating part obviously. Also the tedious aspect of it, in the sense of one single mistake in your calculation, then you'll get all of it wrong. You might miss one decimal place, or you wrote 1 as 7 by mistake, then chances are you'll get the final answer totally wrong. So there's no room for carelessness in Math.
 
Proofs are hard, definitely. It's easy to get caught up in a step because you don't know where to go next, and it's also easy to make a logical jump that makes sense to you but doesn't really make sense on paper. But eventually I learned to look at proofs as puzzles, which you put together piece by piece. You have a starting point (a.k.a., your hypothesis), and you have an idea of what the final picture looks like (a.k.a., the conclusion you're trying to prove). And then the pieces of the puzzle are the theorems and axioms and whatnot that you can use to prove your statement. So yeah, proofs are hard - but it just takes a lot of practice and a different outlook and then they don't seem so bad anymore. :)
 
zararina said:
I think the most difficult aspect in Math is memorizing formulas. There are math problems easy to solve if you just know the right formula for it. Also no room for small mistake cause just a missed point could give you wrong answers.
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That is most certainly true and if you remember the formula incorrectly and implement in a early phase of the equation, the whole thing will be wrong.
 
I'm one of those people who are not too fast when it comes to math. I've always been a slow guy when calculating stuff, for real, the hardest part is when you have to memorize methods and that sort of thing, I definitely don't like math that much, but I have to use it my entire life.
 
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