How does one learn Math?

Math is an inevitable part of human life. It has helped us come long way from stone age human to an interstellar traveler. Humans are genetically programmed to understand math the way it is. While certain animals can also understand counting till an extent specially our primates; it’s only human brain which can absorb complexity of the Math. Having said that, it is still the most dreaded subject among students. So the questions is, how does one learn Math? Can anyone and everyone learn it?

To Math is Human

Human brain is wired to understand Math, but it takes some time for brain to absorb the basics & train itself. Of course, different people have different capabilities; but every human brain can be easily trained to understand and process the Math even to a great complexity level.

Psychological Fear

Generally, the fear among students is mostly psychological. The problem starts at the core of the education methodology itself. Unlike Math, in many other subjects during initial school days, you need to just grasp the knowledge, say memorize name of the continents or oceans. But in math, you need to grasp the knowledge and the be able to apply it at a different numerical problem. In other words, understand how to multiply 32 with 73 by seeing the example & then apply this knowledge to multiply 39 with 93. Since it’s easy to memorize than applying your brain, students naturally find other subjects easy.

Right Way to Learn Math

If we talk about slightly higher classes, process of learning is same across other subjects as well. If you read a story in your English book, it’s not about what you grasped from the story but what thought process your teacher went through to grasp that insight that and can you apply it tomorrow if you read something else. If you read through politics & history of countries; can you realize what structure worked in favor of development and what led to wars.

If Math is learnt right way from the beginning, it will help one broaden his application skill sin future; be it coding, be it social science or even language. The entire purpose of Education is to make you think & learning Math is very basic element of this process.

So, what are some good practices to learn Math? Learning Math is training your brains like the way you train your body in gym. You need to train all body parts equally to be able to build further. Also you can definitely train yourself harder but you can’t take a short cut.

Learn Slow to Learn Fast

In Math, you need to be very clear on your basics. If you spend more time learning basics, you will be extremely fast in learning advanced concepts. It’s ok to take your time but be really thorough with the fundamentals. Being thorough with fundamentals won’t just mean understanding process of doing an arithmetic operation but thinking all possible ways to arrive at an answer even if there are longer routes to arrive at the same answer. Almost every complex problem tomorrow would be a combination of multiple simple problems of todays & understanding fundamentals will help you ace it. You can use tricks but only if you understand the concept behind it, otherwise it’s better off solving a problem from basics. Short-cuts are long routes to the success.

Hard Way is the Right Way

Another suggestion would be to spend as much time on a problem as you can before looking for the solution. Your brain gets trained only by the part it has solved. Solution which you saw in a book is not going to get registered & absorbed by your brain for long. All the time you spend on solving a problem is the time you have spent in training your brain. Even if you made a mistake, your brain will remember why you made a mistake and how to correct it in future. Some one else lifting dumbbells for you is never going to help your body.

Finally, acknowledge what you don’t know and learn it from zero. Since it’s in our genes to understand the Math, you need to believe that sooner or later you will have a full command on the subject like you do on your mother tongue.