Most undergraduates 'show fear when asked to do maths'

@Liam

Right. Enough of this. I've had it to the teeth with listening to your ill-informed nonsense.

1) The study of Mathematics and Science teaches the importance of care and rigour in presenting arguments.

2) You should not need to rely on your memory for math - most relevant equations can be quickly derived from first principles

3) School is a training ground providing you with the basic tools for the modern world. Many students will go on to be scientists, engineers and researchers (both academic and commercial). They will all need maths.

4) Politics and argument without an understanding of rational reasoning and science? That is dangerous. Very dangerous. Take a look at England: Politicians with degrees in Law and Political Studies. Now look at China: Politicians with PhD's in Engineering and Mathematics. Draw your own conclusions... actually I fear you cannot. So let me spell it out: Our economy is tanking, China's is growing furiously. The reason? An objective approach to governance versus the endless prevarication and evasion we witness on a daily basis.

5) There are many aspects of IT. Customer services do not need mathematics. Those writing drivers for audio or video hardware do. Those writing software for medical analysis need a broad understanding of statistical techniques. So don't give me your "I don't use it so it's useless" spiel.

As for your obsession with mathematicians being virgins - ridiculous! Demonstrably untrue.

Let me recap, in case you're attention has wandered: Math in school provides students with an essential toolkit they will need if they wish to persue careers in Engineering or Science. We need engineers and scientists. School prepares you for life. If you choose a different career, this does not give you the right to rubbish the tools you chose not to use.

Now kindly can it.

Where's the maths angle?

These findings are blindingly obvious. Try getting a random selection of university students to do GCSE-level exercises in ANY subject other than the ones they clung onto at A-level and you'll find that the majority find the experience stressful. In most cases, we were glad to give up those subjects when we could.

The authors, for example, clearly gave up science at an early stage in their education because they were no bloody good at it. The notion of alternative hypothesis appears to have past them by, for example.

OK, OK, i concede...

@ Matt Bryant - You lucky git! i had all male maths teachers after the first year, and she was an absolute beast! I could smell her B.O. from the back row!

@ Steve - Fair point. But does the exclusion of a capital letter REALLY make reading that much worse? I truly apologise for being slightly dyslexic and very lazy. I will attempt to make an effort at El Reg in the future, in regards to capitalisation :) i Must admit i hate TXT SPK too, surely it is more complicated to write in TXT SPK on modern predictive text phones? But, 'half baked oaf', come on, surely I'm not that bad, am I? haha.

I will also try not to make jokes about mathematicians in the future. It's funny that i make a comment like that yet in the PS3 discussion so many people are saying much worse about game players yet we all seem to take it with a pinch of salt.

Can't blame the students really

Rational choice : a decision between a hard maths based subject that has little chance of a job (in the field), a high chance of failure and social stigma vs an easier non maths based subject that has none of those disadvantages.

Sod 'doing it for the challenge' - you can do *that* in your spare time, instead of possibly failing whilst gathering three years of student debt and no prospect of quickly paying it back.

Of course there's a difference between a realistic challenge which you think you can manage, and one that stretches you beyond breaking point. If you're doubtful about whether you can manage the level set at the beginning of a degree, it's almost certain you won't manage in future years.

On the other hand the statement "many students choose degrees different to those they preferred – and in which they would be really good in many cases – in order to avoid studying subjects connected with Mathematics'" is an interesting one.

How do they know the students would be good - did they actually perform better than expectations, despite nerves? It's no use being good at all the subject except the maths component.

I'll certainly agree about maths teaching being poor. I was taught my times table (in the 70s), but can't remember being told about weighted averages - despite going through maths at school, college and university level, doing a short session on stats (which at least covered averages, means and standard deviations) and lots of lessons on integration, vectors, analogue electronics and heat transfer along materials (the last one made my brain explode).

I reserve particular contempt for my university maths teacher who taught at an incredible rate, had incomprehensible (hand written) notes and was zero help in assisting with problems. Reading Engineering Mathematics instead of going to the lectures would have been more helpful.

Still, so long as the average mathematician and engineer is poorly paid and finds it difficult to find a job, the situation will not change. As a country we should reward decent engineering, technology and mathematical theory, but we don't.

Re: iR HAVE DA SMARTZ EVN DO i CARNT SPELL

"If a time-travelling day-trip full of Maths and English students from the '70s & '80s suddenly turned up and read these comments, they'd snigger their socks off and call half of you a big bunch of illiterate Spastics and would then most likely kick your arses for it. Maybe even some Jif Lemon in the face. Ah happy days...."

Apart of course from the fact that none of us was ignorant enough to use the term "spastic" as an insult, nor yobbish enough to use ascorbic acid as a weapon. And literal arse-kicking was restricted to the karate club, while metaphorical arse-kicking was beneath us.

Travelling in time... well yes, same way as everyone else. We're not dead yet, you know.

Discovering the Obvious

Maths courses are demanding, and there are people out there who would have trouble getting a passing grade in them. Maybe we could teach mathematics in a way that explained things more clearly to help improve this situation.

But that people who have trouble with math avoid subjects that require it is about as much a surprise as the fact that people who have trouble learning to play a musical instrument avoid that type of career, or those who aren't athletic don't pursue a career as a football player.

Or is the discovery supposed to be that math is "scary" out of all proportion to how hard it really is? If that's what they think they've discovered, apparently competence in maths is not enough to guarantee your research results will always be valid.

The results aren't surprising.

People in general can't do math(s), I'd have guessed at higher percentages.

Look at how much money is spent on lotteries world wide. Look at how many people waste money gambling (cards, dice, horses, dogs, sports franchise of your choice). The odds are ALWAYS with the house, yet for some strange reason people think that they will eventually win.

The mind boggles.

Lottery: A tax on people who can't do math(s). --Snigglets (I think)

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe and not make messes in the house. -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"

@AC

"@Rota: One of the interesting effects of prosperity in Japan is that fewer kids want to be engineers. In my parents' generation of the family there were a metallurgist, a physicist, a geologist, and a biologist: their offspring ran proportionally more to lawyers and finance types."

Yes, I can understand that. The offspring see how poorly paid their parents are as engineers and decide they want something better paid. My mother was a registered nurse for many years, her income was low, similarly, I wouldn't want to marry a nurse.

But, you can' t beat how interesting engineering really is. How many people can say they've worked with things where the dimensions are many times smaller than the thickness of a human hair, that you can't even see with a naked eye, where you worry about time in millionth, millionths of a second.

I'd like to see ...

Anyone without a good grasp of mathematic first principles design an operating system or work out file compression techniques or graphic file formats or, indeed, write real-time hardware device drivers. All of these are ordinary everyday aspects of computing and so, Liam, where do you think these things come from? Did they just spontaneously pop out of the head of man fully formed? Or perhaps were some analytical mathematics and engineering disciplines employed en route first?

Must be great to be a God-like being who just needs to think something to make it become reality by magic!

Recently I discovered that by using an application of Boolean Logic and set theory I could speed up my SQL queries by a factor of twelve. It just came to me in a flash. Hadn't thought much about either of those things for years but, they proved to be extremely useful.

Remind me. What is it you do in IT again?

@Jake - lottery

The lottery isn't necessarily a tax on people that can't do maths; it is possibly a tax on hope, however.

Some people play because it's fun, because it doesn't cost much, and because the chance to win is non zero.

Winning the lottery jackpot is less likely than being simultaneously hit by an asteroid and lightning, but at least if you buy a ticket your chance is above zero rather than absolutely zero (plus there are smaller prizes with merely lightning strike levels of probability).

Winning other types of gambling (everything you mention, except dice) at least allows for a certain amount of skill and can sometimes be exploited by mathematicians. Of course, most people will not have the requisite amount of skill, and the few really talented players will find their ability to place bets curtailed (unless, by playing, they are bringing in money from other people..)

Maybe if they would apply it to the study at hand

I remeber from my schooldays. I hated math (i still do. if it can't be done using + - * / and the odd root or squre and a couple of logs, it isn't worth doing. period.)

When i asked the teacher to give me aprtical example of some theorem. he started to explain it could be used to find the exact points to bend a metal plate to create a gutter with the maximum water throughput... i replied : i am studying electronics, i am not in metalshop 101..... and that was it. The teacher pulled a complete blank... he could not find an application in my field of interest.

That is the main problem. Teach maths as they are applicable to a field of study. and if that field of study happens to be mathematics you can pull all stops out.

@Peter Kay

"The lottery isn't necessarily a tax on people that can't do maths; it is possibly a tax on hope, however."

I'll go along with that, but it's a false hope brought on by the inability to do math(s).

"Some people play because it's fun, because it doesn't cost much, and because the chance to win is non zero."

I could roll dollars (euros, pounds, whatever) down the gutter of a San Francisco hill, hoping to find that my coin lands where a bunch of other people's coins landed, and thus collecting the lot. Same outcome ... except I get the fun of watching the coin bounce down the street before some bum adds it to his booze fund. Your way, some bum adds it to his booze fund without the fun. Either way, the chance of a win is non-zero, but the realistic expectation of winning is zero.

"Winning the lottery jackpot is less likely than being simultaneously hit by an asteroid and lightning, but at least if you buy a ticket your chance is above zero rather than absolutely zero (plus there are smaller prizes with merely lightning strike levels of probability)."

See above. I'd rather invest in something likely to profit. I'll bet you'd make more profit over the space of a year purchasing 5 gallons of gas (petrol) and pushing a lawnmower around on weekends, knocking on doors and asking to mow lawns for a few quid. In fact, I know people who have put themselves thru' university my way ... and people who have been forced to drop out your way. My way provides exercise, fresh air & sunshine, too. Which is probably why more people prefer your way.

"Winning other types of gambling (everything you mention, except dice) at least allows for a certain amount of skill and can sometimes be exploited by mathematicians."

Uh-huh. Sure it can. Show me a rich gambler who isn't either effectively "the house", or has corporate sponsorship, which is pretty much the same thing. (As a side note, I can roll straight sevens all day long with an honest pair of dice, by hand, on a sidewalk or on felt. Give me a cup, and I'm about 75/25. Make me bank it, and I'm about 50/50 ...)

"Of course, most people will not have the requisite amount of skill"

Actually, none do. There are gamblers, and then there is "the house". In the afore mentioned back-alley craps game, I'm "the house", the rest are gambling.

"and the few really talented players will find their ability to place bets curtailed (unless, by playing, they are bringing in money from other people..)"

And that, my friend, is exactly how Lost Wages & Atlantic City, me in an alley[1], et alii, make a profit from people who can't do math. We are the house. You are the mark. Learn math(s).

[1] No actual suckers have been taken during the typing of this post.

@Liam

Oh, I dunno, I get a nice share of opportunity to map convex hulls and investigate concave manifolds.

Liam - cease the abusive language and insults please

x

Compare?

I'd like to see how those figures compare with the stress [etc] shown when students are presented with questions from other fields. Might offer some perspective - if any perspective is to be had.

@Jake

Whether or not it is a 'false hope' is an opinion, not a fact. It is /highly probable/ to be a fact, but due to it being a game of chance there is still the minimal possibility it is merely an opinion ;). Someone usually wins. It might be you. Thereby lies the hook that separates the players from their money.

To use the accountancy term of 'opportunity cost', 52 quid is up for investment each year (one ticket a week). Let's say you invest it wisely and add 5% to that - so now there's 55 quid. Enough for an inexpensive meal for two, or a decent night out for one.

The other possibility is that you enjoy the buying of the ticket and the possibility of winning, however unlikely that is, plus there's the remote possibility of an extremely favourable outcome.

Your lawnmower argument isn't valid because it doesn't compare apples to oranges. The lottery requires minimal effort to enter - mowing a lawn and finding punters does not. Neither is rolling money down hills a good comparison as the chance of a point coin rolling into two and a half million quid is even more remote than winning the lottery..

On the other hand, if you compare seriously studying horseracing vs mowing lawns you might have a point for most people.

@Peter Kay

Whatever. If you enjoy throwing your money away, who am I to stop you? In fact, thanks for paying your good money to avoid increasing my taxes.