Post Azv6mNCMnrjcWCuLFA by qkslvrwolf@mastodon.social
(DIR) More posts by qkslvrwolf@mastodon.social
(DIR) Post #Azv6Mf7dXapAZwR3ZI by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-11-05T01:30:42Z
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Feeling kind of down because a student was crying about her test. She's been working very hard but the proofs just aren't coming together for her. :(
(DIR) Post #Azv6SH0w5SEvXvycRE by HappytoBe@mastodon.social
2025-11-05T01:31:38Z
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@futurebird Teaching is so hard. Thank you for doing it with so much love.
(DIR) Post #Azv6Sq4hjR3CHl0cfg by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-11-05T01:31:52Z
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Contrary to popular belief, there is a LOT of crying in mathematics. I've see in in grad school.
(DIR) Post #Azv6ZoaBg6v9gV3rii by HappytoBe@mastodon.social
2025-11-05T01:33:05Z
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@futurebird I was going to be a marine biologist. And then I encountered calculus. ๐ฅบ
(DIR) Post #Azv6mNCMnrjcWCuLFA by qkslvrwolf@mastodon.social
2025-11-05T01:35:21Z
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@futurebird I used to rage cry when doing math assignments. Definitely which I could've been more chill and learned more.
(DIR) Post #Azv6ydQ8JeKEIzC4DQ by Fat_Farang@mastodon.social
2025-11-05T01:37:33Z
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@futurebird And self abuse; like me banging my head on the desk trying to understand Calculus.
(DIR) Post #Azv6zN6YSlzrzaO55M by tarheel@mstdn.io
2025-11-05T01:37:39Z
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@futurebirdUndergraduate thermodynamics brought me to tears. Grateful not to have received an F.
(DIR) Post #Azv70YKaD3ar6EVoaO by mayintoronto@beige.party
2025-11-05T01:37:55Z
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@futurebird My first year teaching, in the first test I gave my AP chemistry class, half of them cried during the test because this class of high achievers never saw something they couldn't figure out like this.Oops. Learned a lot from that one. It helped me to figure out what was missing from how I was teaching.Only 2 kids cried during the midterm. (But that school/program was messed up. I don't think it was just me.)
(DIR) Post #Azv73uy8Uyp2B8cL7A by OrdRadical@beige.party
2025-11-05T01:38:30Z
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@futurebird Daughter was overachiever in high school - straight As and interned in engineering dept at local company. Got to college and discovered she had to actually take notes and study. Then 4rd year of engineering degree and thermodynamics class with advanced math nearly broke her. She made it tho and works at GM now.
(DIR) Post #Azv7beLqmxE8UCnIsi by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-11-05T01:44:39Z
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@mayintoronto I decided not to give a "proof quiz" (I kind of hate using class time for testing, but testing is also important) so some of them didn't pay attention to the very ominous comments I'd been putting on their homework.She's a really great kid and I think she'll get it soon enough. That said the school I teach at has a very aggressive curriculum. Mostly the students want it and enjoy it but they want to do well so when they don't it's a huge blow.
(DIR) Post #Azv7kwFjbKaGc2MYJk by paninid@mastodon.world
2025-11-05T01:40:50Z
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@mayintoronto @futurebird brutal
(DIR) Post #Azv7kxIbi8TZrEiMQy by mayintoronto@beige.party
2025-11-05T01:43:01Z
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@paninid This was in China, and these kids were woefully unequipped to take on any science in English, let alone AP chem. Science education is fundamentally different in China, and there was a lot of reteaching to be done. Then add on the language barrier, plus the stresses of that program of needing to finish 2 high school diploma equivalents in multiple languages... I don't envy them.@futurebird
(DIR) Post #Azv7kyGW7OOkr2kCoa by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-11-05T01:46:16Z
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@mayintoronto @paninid We get some international students who are algebra and computation masterminds, but some of the "explain your reasoning" is very alien. It's not that they don't think logically ... parsing it out is just alien.
(DIR) Post #Azv7lb6FjUMRIVF3jM by jhavok@mstdn.party
2025-11-05T01:46:26Z
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@futurebird I could use calculus functionally, but proofs never clicked for me. I never understood what d/dx meant until long after I was away from calculus.
(DIR) Post #Azv84Z3lXf88TL7g7k by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-11-05T01:49:52Z
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@jhavok "I never understood what d/dx meant until long after I was away from calculus"Frankly I think this is true of most people who take calculus. It's not really explained well. Too much time is spent learning "methods" that matter even less than ever. Although there are people working to improve this. Really knowing what the d/dx and dy/dx is all about IS the point.
(DIR) Post #Azv88MaVqzxQwxFeIC by scattapilla@jorts.horse
2025-11-05T01:50:28Z
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@futurebird when i was collecting signatures for the grad student union i met a 4th year math phd student that hadnt left her room in the math building for years
(DIR) Post #Azv8gWJkBb1SyHhACu by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-11-05T01:56:44Z
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@jhavok But, there is also another matter:New concepts need time to sink in. You learn a new concept and then you need to use it right away, then we move on. The class that made me cry was Complex Analysis. I was so frustrated by "poles.". But then a decade later when I looked at my notes I cried AGAIN because it was all so simple I couldn't understand how I'd ever been so upset about it. Of course, by then I'd used it to do things, seen in many contexts. Dreamed about it.
(DIR) Post #Azv8kD7bUuNaawmCZs by jhavok@mstdn.party
2025-11-05T01:57:20Z
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@futurebird My best semester of calculus was with a prof who seriously could not do calculus. He would do a wrong solution, everyone else would dutifully copy it, and I would wrack my brain to figure out what he had done wrong. He'd be halfway through the next wrong solution when I would figure it out and raise my hand. If there was any subjectivity in math he never would have passed me.
(DIR) Post #Azv8wMkdWM1Nw3pVSa by JosephMeyer@c.im
2025-11-05T01:59:34Z
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@futurebird I wish they were tears of joy, which can be a byproduct of new and profound understanding. But there are other worthy fields of study if mathematics is not oneโs forte.
(DIR) Post #Azv9C06nTOViLOeO25 by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-11-05T02:02:25Z
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@JosephMeyer Math can make very clever people who are accustomed to running circles around others mentally feel totally clueless and lost. And it can happen out of nowhere, if, for example your prof assumes you know all about some topic and launches off in a new direction. There is a meme where two guys are taking notes in math and bored since the teacher is writing 2+2 on the board. They blink and suddenly the board is full of arcane symbols from the pit of hell.
(DIR) Post #Azv9GYMU3ycNji9tdQ by jhavok@mstdn.party
2025-11-05T02:03:13Z
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@futurebird Big advantage of taking calculus and physics at the same time. We'd immediately apply this week's alculus in this week's physics. I always wondered if that was deliberate.
(DIR) Post #Azv9Ij2HLdfdQ8kANs by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-11-05T02:03:39Z
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@JosephMeyer All I can do as a teacher is watch for signs this has happened. Also... if a math person is talking about 2+2 with great care... be warned, they are trying to find an easy way in to the deep end. There is probably a horrible little wrinkle.
(DIR) Post #Azv9V91WYGaTUmJR6u by DataGhost@mstdn.social
2025-11-05T02:05:50Z
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@futurebird Iโm glad she has such a caring teacher.
(DIR) Post #AzvA1YSFXEg5dRGeBc by jhavok@mstdn.party
2025-11-05T02:11:43Z
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@futurebird @JosephMeyer I had a trig prof who moved so fast you couldn't blink or you'd be lost. She'd do two chapters in each class, yesterday's chapter and the new chapter, so you got two looks at each chapter.
(DIR) Post #AzvA3nFHVvtc5TGkls by dandylover1@someplace.social
2025-11-05T02:12:04Z
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@futurebird @JosephMeyer It's even more fun when you're blind and a problem that someone sighted can write on one page takes two or three pages in braille, so that, by the time you finish, you have absolutely no idea what you just did!
(DIR) Post #AzvCFJFT4GMmR7yXYG by JosephMeyer@c.im
2025-11-05T02:36:38Z
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@futurebird Indeed. My late uncle, Harry J. Kamack, was one such person. He coauthored an unpublished manuscript, Rubikโs Tesseract, which Douglas Hofstadter mentioned briefly in one of his books. I think it was noted in Metamagical Themas. I am weak in math and remember a family conversation where my late uncle said, โI donโt understand why people struggle with math when it is so logical.โ Well, it was to him and was not to me.
(DIR) Post #AzvEFZ5wLqKLUWliHg by mmezabet@craftgoblin.club
2025-11-05T02:58:57Z
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@futurebird Bless both y'all's hearts. I seriously struggled with proofs because I moved mid-school year from a place that taught them separately at the end of the year to a place that had been teaching them all year. (And also I was difficult child. You shouldn't tell me for 10 years what a triangle is then suddenly decide *I* need to prove it. *You* prove it if you're unsure, I can tell by looking.)
(DIR) Post #AzvM77Trw2PtAGReHQ by NotCaprolactum@mstdn.social
2025-11-05T04:27:09Z
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@futurebird There's also an emotional toll to feeling lost and clueless. Sometimes if peers don't feel the same, or you are convinced it could never happen to you, then feeling lost is a feeling of letting yourself down, of being inadequate, something being wrong with me for not getting this obvious logical thing. @JosephMeyer
(DIR) Post #AzvNKXOD1CHpEnl9eK by stevegis_ssg@mas.to
2025-11-05T04:40:46Z
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@futurebird @JosephMeyer Hello yes this was me when we hit multiple integration. I cannot multiply integrate. There doesn't seem to be a space in my head the right shape for that to fit into. I really tried, taking multivariable calculus 3 times (it was required) until I finally passed and even then I failed the final but I'd gotten so good at partial differentiation and vector algebra that it averaged out to a C.
(DIR) Post #AzvoEotNjCIgXwq2q0 by llewelly@sauropods.win
2025-11-05T09:42:20Z
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@futurebird @jhavok I guess for me it all started with seeing speed as change in position per unit time. Position is ๐ฅ, time is ๐ก, ๐ is change, and / is the relationship between the two, and so speed is ๐๐ฅ/๐๐ก . And then seeing acceleration as change in speed per unit time.
(DIR) Post #AzwpHuGOVbYtBab8cq by lufthans@mastodon.social
2025-11-05T21:28:46Z
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@futurebird @JosephMeyer including pentagrams and the + turned into an 11?