A significant contributor to this problem is the relatively new TSA pre-check passenger category. Along with airport personnel and premium passengers, these people usually immediately pre-processed by TSA personnel as they arrive, which can starve the regular passenger lines of service. And they often have dedicated screening lines with space and TSA agents that are underutilized, while the regular adjacent lines are overloaded. Some airports like PDX (Portland) seem very attuned to issues like these, and are hustling people through as best as possible. And then there's AUS (Austin) where the TSA personnel are virtually clueless about slowdowns, much less the cause of them, and also appear uninterested in trying to improve anything.
Unfortunately, there's very little awareness of this problem. I hate when people dismiss something based on lack of evidence when simple, careful observation can quickly refute it. If you find yourself quickly dismissing this, first look up the Dunning-Kruger effect. Just because it's not obvious to you doesn't make it not so.
We live in a culture that confuses information with knowledge. Our brains grow in response to work, NOT stimulation (although educational video game manufacturers will quickly try to convince you otherwise). Brain growth is entirely analogous to body growth (not a coincidence), and sit-ups make your abdominal muscles stronger but vibrating belts do not. If you think otherwise, your concept of learning is probably a variation of the common, and wrong, "learning is by osmosis." In our culture we quickly turn to television/video games/smartphones/web-surfing when we feel bored. And when our kids cry out in anxiety about being bored, we stick a DVD in to play, or hand them a game controller. But boredom is a (very interesting) transition point from a passive, non-constructive thought state, to an active, constructive one. The reason it's stressful is because you're going from a state of not exerting yourself, to a state where you do have to do work. Next time you're in a position to address someone's boredom (a more accessible exercise with kids but works equally well with adults), don't - instead wait and see what happens. You'll see the transition from a non-creative state to a creative one.
If you still have a hard time believing this, pick out a few of those who you would consider the world's greatest thinkers, and see what their upbringing was like.
First, forget the notion that some people are unable to learn math. Some may be better than others, but like language, the human brain is wired to understand mathematical notions. The timing required to track the trajectory of a ball and catch it is a very sophisticated math problem that even very young children can master.
Second, remember that math is a tool we've constructed to solve problems. For most people, having a detachment between learning something tangible and learning a tool to solve it, short circuits the natural process of learning. Learning, or at least learning well, virtually always requires an interest or need in the subject matter.
So treating math as just formulas and rules and a vocabulary of terms to remember is a huge problem. To understand math, you should understand the underlying concepts and how they apply to the real world, and being able to conceptualize those ideas when you're looking at formulas, etc. A good teacher, math or otherwise, will implicitly to this for you. However, there really are very few good teachers around, either at primary or higher education levels. And colleges are increasingly money machines designed to crank students through the system, and even good professors succumb to the pressures of getting as many students through courses as possible, instead of taking the time to help people understand. After all, by college, shouldn't you be prepared to do all that work yourself? Or so goes the thinking.
Start with understanding basic ideas of linear rates, and find a parallel in real life, e.g., like driving on the freeway. See how the position and speed of your car on the freeway corresponds to a linear function that intersects the x and y axis of a graph. Then move to understand acceleration, and what that looks like on a graph. Then think of two cars in different places moving toward each other at different speeds, and how lines on a graph that intersect can help you understand when they will crash. Now what if one is accelerating? If you're not interested in cars and driving, pick something else of interest to you. At each step of the way in learning math, if you make sure you understand the underlying concept and how to visualize in action in day to day life, you will make learning much much easier.
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This is great timing. I like how the LUX researchers' conceptual description of WIMPs sounds exactly like neutrinos: https://medium.com/starts-with...
A significant contributor to this problem is the relatively new TSA pre-check passenger category. Along with airport personnel and premium passengers, these people usually immediately pre-processed by TSA personnel as they arrive, which can starve the regular passenger lines of service. And they often have dedicated screening lines with space and TSA agents that are underutilized, while the regular adjacent lines are overloaded. Some airports like PDX (Portland) seem very attuned to issues like these, and are hustling people through as best as possible. And then there's AUS (Austin) where the TSA personnel are virtually clueless about slowdowns, much less the cause of them, and also appear uninterested in trying to improve anything.
Unfortunately, there's very little awareness of this problem. I hate when people dismiss something based on lack of evidence when simple, careful observation can quickly refute it. If you find yourself quickly dismissing this, first look up the Dunning-Kruger effect. Just because it's not obvious to you doesn't make it not so. We live in a culture that confuses information with knowledge. Our brains grow in response to work, NOT stimulation (although educational video game manufacturers will quickly try to convince you otherwise). Brain growth is entirely analogous to body growth (not a coincidence), and sit-ups make your abdominal muscles stronger but vibrating belts do not. If you think otherwise, your concept of learning is probably a variation of the common, and wrong, "learning is by osmosis." In our culture we quickly turn to television/video games/smartphones/web-surfing when we feel bored. And when our kids cry out in anxiety about being bored, we stick a DVD in to play, or hand them a game controller. But boredom is a (very interesting) transition point from a passive, non-constructive thought state, to an active, constructive one. The reason it's stressful is because you're going from a state of not exerting yourself, to a state where you do have to do work. Next time you're in a position to address someone's boredom (a more accessible exercise with kids but works equally well with adults), don't - instead wait and see what happens. You'll see the transition from a non-creative state to a creative one. If you still have a hard time believing this, pick out a few of those who you would consider the world's greatest thinkers, and see what their upbringing was like.
First, forget the notion that some people are unable to learn math. Some may be better than others, but like language, the human brain is wired to understand mathematical notions. The timing required to track the trajectory of a ball and catch it is a very sophisticated math problem that even very young children can master. Second, remember that math is a tool we've constructed to solve problems. For most people, having a detachment between learning something tangible and learning a tool to solve it, short circuits the natural process of learning. Learning, or at least learning well, virtually always requires an interest or need in the subject matter. So treating math as just formulas and rules and a vocabulary of terms to remember is a huge problem. To understand math, you should understand the underlying concepts and how they apply to the real world, and being able to conceptualize those ideas when you're looking at formulas, etc. A good teacher, math or otherwise, will implicitly to this for you. However, there really are very few good teachers around, either at primary or higher education levels. And colleges are increasingly money machines designed to crank students through the system, and even good professors succumb to the pressures of getting as many students through courses as possible, instead of taking the time to help people understand. After all, by college, shouldn't you be prepared to do all that work yourself? Or so goes the thinking. Start with understanding basic ideas of linear rates, and find a parallel in real life, e.g., like driving on the freeway. See how the position and speed of your car on the freeway corresponds to a linear function that intersects the x and y axis of a graph. Then move to understand acceleration, and what that looks like on a graph. Then think of two cars in different places moving toward each other at different speeds, and how lines on a graph that intersect can help you understand when they will crash. Now what if one is accelerating? If you're not interested in cars and driving, pick something else of interest to you. At each step of the way in learning math, if you make sure you understand the underlying concept and how to visualize in action in day to day life, you will make learning much much easier.