I almost failed highschool math and the teacher told me I would never amount to anything...

I almost failed highschool math and the teacher told me I would never amount to anything. I have holes in my foundation but I have been practicing for a couple months since I would like to go into math at uni. Any advice? How can I go from full retard in math to 4.0 math major?

Hard work, passion, it may not be enough for 4.0 but with 4/5 hours of work a day it will get better every day

I've currently been doing pic related. I haven't seen drastic improvement I usually glide through questions no problem but get stuck for hours on one due to holes in my math foundation. I want to know how to fill in these holes but I don't know what I don't konw

old highschool maths teacher told me i'd never amount to anything

now i'm starting my post-grad thesis, and that bitch is fuckin' dead

>other people telling you what you can and cant do
>this comes from a person that dedicated his lite to teaching teens and never made it in the big league
Just keep working,there is no magic in anything even art.
its all work work work.
One day you will get there

Well, GPA's don't transfer, so basically spend due diligence in your work. Do all the problems in the book, and keep them organized so you can review them if you ever need to touch up on something.

At non-shit tier universities, most will offer a wealthy amount of options to help students, especially in math, deservingly so. Utilize these! This really can't be said enough, in college, there are many people who fail simply because they don't use the resources offered to them. If you have to hire a tutor, go to homework help centers, and pay a weekly visit to your professor during office hours, DO IT. It's incredibly helpful, and it will allow you to secure your fundamentals when dealing with a problem that features a complication of them.

There are also tons and tons and tons of online resources. Tons. For low level math, KhanAcedmy is super helpful.

I did shitty in highschool as well man, I'm pretty sure I got like a 450/800 on the math section of the SAT too. It forced me to go to community college. I bit the bullet, did 4 semesters of math in 2 semesters, as well as getting almost every Gen Ed done, hated my fucking life, got a 3.5 GPA, accepted into a physics program, now I feel amazing and my work ethic is 10x better. I just started a multivariable calculus course yesterday, and I've already studied for the first exam, and I'm absolutely certain I'm acing that bitch. Good luck.

Why do you want to major in math? What do you want to do for a living? I want you to succeed and everything but if you're trying to major in math to spite your high school teacher that might not be such a great idea. If you're truly passionate about math, why were you so bad at it in high school?

Most of my life I've hated math because of the way it was taught it school. I hated how when I didin't understand a unit/chapter of the curriculum they would keep moving forward with tests. So the fact that I was behind and constantly trying to catch up really put me down along with the teacher telling me I would never be good at it. So I decided to buckle down the summer after I graduated to simply do math and I fell in love with it. The satisfaction I got from solving problems and seeing patterns would make my day and since I was going at my own pace I could spend time to actually understand math rather than just use it as a tool. Almost every field uses math I'm not completely sure what I want to do for the rest of my life but I'm currently interested in finance though I would like to have the possibility of going into engineering or physics if possible.

Thanks for the story man this is just what I needed to hear

Read the Art of Problem Solving vol 1: The Basics and vol 2: and Beyond. It has all the info on typical high school math and quite a bit on non-typical high school math as well, all arranged in a more pedagogically sound way than the shitty highschool ones. Has a bunch of good problems and will get you up to the higher tier of american high school math comp problems. Doesn't ignore proofs. It's pretty concise too. Around sixty or so chapters.

>I almost failed highschool math and the teacher told me I would never amount to anything. I have holes...
Just like my chinese paperbooks

I'm surprised so many of you guys have the same backstory as me, I always assumed you guys were all your highschool valedictorians and stuff. I always did really poorly in the classroom environment and I hated math just because of the parts I didn't understand yet, I barely scraped by all though grade school and failed AP calc my senior year. Later on I found ways to apply those concepts to scenarios in engineering and re-learned everything I'd failed before, back then math felt like a chore or a problem to be dealt with, now math to me is freedom

>I have holes in my foundation
You absolutely can do it. Focus on the axiomatic definition of field (the real numbers) and solve the basic exercises (you can find this in Munkres - Topology or Rudin - Principles of M. Analysis).

Then you need the very basics of logic. Just understand the truth tables. Otherwise you'll hardly appreciate proofs if you're a brainlet. Derivations are a bonus.

Don't glide thru problems. Read the pages. Glide thru the words until you come across some you don't understand.
If f(x)=ax^2+bx+c then it's also true that f(x)=a(x+(b/2a))^2+(c-(b^2/2)) and the vertex of such a parabola is (-b/2a, f(-b/2a) but the vertex is also (-h,k) such that f(x)=(x-h)^2+k.

Congratulations, you've mastered precalculus. Are your basic algebra skills ready for calculus now? (Basic algebra: addition, subtraction, division, multiplication, FACTORING and order of operations.)

Oh, don't forget to graph

>tfw having the same problem
>tfw there s just 1!!!! week left to learn everything i should have learnt in the past 6 years

SHIT

respect is due to the good teachers doing the hefty work tho

None of them give a shit desu, they just want the pension and vacation time

how do you plan to deal with that.

What's with american teachers telling kids they will never amount to something? In any other civilized country that would result in them being fired.

I have never came across one.

Well most of the people who become teachers in america are the ones who didn't amount to anything themselves leading them to go into teaching. So they lash out on kids due to their resentment

Make a cheat sheet or reference sheet for all things trigonometry.

I didn't learn how to add or subtract fractions until last year at the age of 23. I am not joking, I'm deadly serious. I completely fell through the system, despite not being a complete retard.
Currently learning differential calculus, followed by integral. Will apply to a mathematics or engineering program next year.

Agreed but public schools aren't set up this way. Teachers HAVE to get through the curriculum. They are required to. Mostly do to state demands, state testing standards etc.

categorically false and an old meme. Get over yourselves /sci

The fucking thing I hate about precalculus is all the graphing, I can't understand why geotards like geometry, all that scribbling doodling...-_-'

>most of the people who
>become teachers in america
[citation needed]

Learning differential calc at 24 is not 4.0 math major in fact its not even math major at all, its bad

My old highschool math teacher said the same thing. Now I'm in a Begining Algebra Review course at the jr. college and 26 years old. That bitch is probably still making a cozy forty thousand a year.

Teachers probably say this to motivate delinquents. You should thank them.

my highschool teachers always told me i was a bright mind and would never have to worry about a job. joke's on them, i dropped out at 24 due to lack of motivation.

High school dropout (on my 15th birthday) who went on to get a math degree reporting in. Keep up the hard work OP.

well if you are working now they weren't wrong lol.

My elementary school math teacher said I would never amount to anything.
Now i'm studying remedial math in college and I have almost figured out how to recognize a quadratic equation. I want to see the look on his face when I finally memorize the quadratic formula.

Can we get a back story?

100% of math is about justifying the numbers with the pictures. Graphing is essential.

Newton and Hittites millennia before him watched objects cut a line across the sky and drew pictures to mimic their paths and then asked themselves 'how can I know where to look for this object tomorrow night?'
This is calculus.

Here's something I need to mention for OP (or anyone else):

Right now, the math is much more applied and tangible. Up until multivariate calculus and differential equations, things will be applied and tangible. You will be able to "see" why your answer is correct. But you will get ASS-RAPED by Abstract Algebra if you aren't careful.

When I was a freshman/sophomore, I thought abstract algebra would be a pretty cool class to take--I rocked at elementary algebra and knew all this stuff about factoring and shit. But then shit hit the fan when I started abstract algebra. It was a completely and totally different animal. There was no "solving for x" anymore. It was nasty amounts of memorization and proof writing.

I'm not saying don't do it--I'm just warning all the math hopefuls that if you like math and are majoring in it because it's applied, you need to change your studying habits BEFORE hitting linear algebra and consequently abstract algebra.

This, if you go into Analysis or Abstract Algebra without knowing how to write a proof, you are fucking boned.

If that's really you're pic, I'll teach you about the number 69

I'm not a math major. Read the post properly. I'm learning in my own time.

get close to your math teacher....you know?

>I need more than a 4.0 gpa to be satisfied

You need a satisfying career to be satisfied.

Spivak?

Everything that my highschool teachers told me or prepared me for college was wrong.

what you need to succeed is:
a solutions manual
google
real time chat with an expert

also pro tip, don't spend more than 10-15 minutes trying to figure out a problem (let alone hours).

if you cant get the answer and there isnt a step-by-step solution, or if you dont understand one of the steps, you should ask for help (on sci, professor, wherever).

if you cant ask for help at the time, just move on to the next problem or work on something else.

time efficiency is super important, and in the long run spending a couple hours here and there on a single problem over the course of months really adds up and doesnt help learning/understanding.

Just remember OP, never tell yourself something is too hard, or you're just not good at it, or you "aren't a math person," or you aren't smart enough.

Literally all undergrad degrees can be completed with good grades by anyone with an IQ higher than 90. This isnt an insult or a joke. Your ability to succeed in undergrad is pretty much 100% on effort, work ethic, study habits, and time efficiency.

You need to find the best method of learning that suits you, whether that is lectures, or tutors, or independently going through the book yourself.

Also as others have said, use every resource available to you. There's nothing wrong or embarrassing about asking for "extra" help.

It's all about what you put into it, and unless you have a learning disability, there is no reason you can't do well in those math courses.

You just need to learn to recognize when your method of learning isnt optimal, and change it for the better. If you can do that, you'll do great, without question.

Can confirm