Have you ever felt you were too dumb to study math or science?

Have you ever felt you were too dumb to study math or science?
How did you overcome it?
Is it better to accept that you're not smart and switch to a business major instead?

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gwern.net/Spaced-repetition
sivers.org/srs
jackkinsella.ie/articles/janki-method
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>How did you overcome it?
Get an IQ test.

practice

I got a 104 but still struggle with engineering math 1

If you are pursuing, chances are you are able to do it. It's really rare for someone who is too dumb to learn something to even give a shot at it. If you were too dumb for it, you would be one of those "I don't know how to divide 25/2, ok? It's too hard" people. It is probably the case that you don't actually have a Gauss-level IQ, but definitely not too dumb for it.

Look up:
- Cal Newport's Study Hacks blog and optionally his books
- CollegeInfoGeek
- Make It Stick book, partciularly the last chapter.
- Summary of the Learning How To Learn course (I think there's some good Medium post about it).

Ultimately, learning is meant to be difficult and painful.
And I sincerely mean that in all of its entirety -- hours upon hours of rumination, confusion, fustration, inepitude.
All of that, for that one stupidly small level of insight required to wrap our heads around whatever that woes us.
What you describe is just an instantiation of the foregoing; your sense of self-efficacy in learning these higher-order abstract consequences.

tl;dr IMO it's not meant to be overcome.
You just get better at handling /feeling/ dumb.
After all, the only thing we know is that we know nothing.

>Have you ever felt you were too dumb to study math or science?
At the start of every university lecture in physics, mathematics, chemistry or a related ("hard" science) field, yes.
>How did you overcome it?
By choosing civil engineering.

>How did you overcome it?
I haven't and after years of this shit I don't think I ever will be able to. Being a brainlet has destroyed my life and I'm gonna end up killing myself at some point in the next few months.

>How did you overcome it?
I studied more. Reviewed the things that was "assumed we already knew" for holes in my understanding and studied outside the curriculum.

I still feel like a brainlet, but at least I don't feel like an imposter anymore.

I feel like I'm good at learning what is taught in courses and solving problems but ask me to do research in a lab and I'll be clueless

Thanks for the recommendations.
What's the consensus of SRS? Waste of time or not?

Allow me to go on a tangent about learning, what role I believe SRS should play in it.

SRS is for the *maintenance* of knowledge.
Anki is just an computational instantiation of that.
A non-software approach would be recalling what you've learnt last week in your courses (this would be harder to execute for people with many years in the knowledge worker domain).
People commonly think of Anki as being software-based flashcards and somehow make that fucking mental leap that somehow the foregoing equates to memorisation which somehow means that it has no utility in the learning process.
The presupposition here is that memorisation and understanding are two distinct processes in the mind.
Who is not to say understanding comes first, followed by memorisation, in order for the learning process to be optimal?
As humans, we either use it or lose it.
This is probably one of the most rigorous truths you'll find in Psychology (at least for semantic memories, not so for motor memories or other things)..
Yet somehow you find all these fucking nerds that think that once you understand it, you'll never forget about it -- that you'll never have to look at the textbook, the reference material,.
Naive.
Don't stop at understanding the material, practice retrieval-based learning i.e. make sure you revisit what you've learnt *from memory*.
Interrupt the process of forgetting.
This is covered more in-depth in Make It Stick (grab the referenced academic papers if the fluffy writing bothers you).

tl;dr Yes if you know why you're using it.
For more reading, gwern.net/Spaced-repetition

No, I actually always thought I was a genius.

Extending upon :
In software development, it completely baffles me as to why SRS isn't used more.
We use many tools, concepts and languages across different domains in order to deliver a single product.
One moment, you're hacking away in your IDE or text editor, with all of its infinite keybindings and commands.
The next moment, you're getting your head around an SQL query.
Another moment, your colleague interrupts you for design trade-offs about a database or software architecture design.
Soon enough, perhaps your hacking away in GDB, shell scripts, or complex Unix commands.
And next week, you get fired because some fucktard SJW frames you for sexual harassment -- now you'll need to get preppy for your next ~~technical interview~~ intelligence test, and that's a fucking can of worms itself.
Who knows if you're using any of that in your next gig.
This is a perfect scenario for using SRS to maintain what you've learnt and keep your skills sharp and polished.
Yet it fucking baffles me that in computer science and software development / engineering it is rarely used at all, even frowned upon!
The relevant coding and comp sci subreddits are a testament to this hivemind mentality.
Hacker News is at least a little more open-minded.

If you're in software development, sivers.org/srs and jackkinsella.ie/articles/janki-method is also relevant.

All the time. I gave up when I was younger, but I recently figured some stuff out and it has given me enough confidence to try.

going through that right now. I feel like I've hit a wall and that my lack of math skills is finally killing me. I spent a lot of today solving what is probably a simple math problem and I couldn't figure out how to google for a way to solve it like I usually do. Then I solve it and I'm not sure what to do with the results.

unironically me
I was doing mechanical but I was too brainlet for dynamics so after barely passing that class i swapped out

This is the only good post on Veeky Forums

Take it from me, I have gone from algebra II to real analysis, mathematical statistics and abstract algebra

I have undoubtedly gotten better at math. And I have ALWAYS felt like a bumbling retard while doing it. But my confusion is less intimidating now

>Have you ever felt you were too dumb to study math or science?
Yes

>How did you overcome it?
Just fucking accept it

>Is it better to accept that you're not smart and switch to a business major instead?
Well, it depends I do not imagine myself in a buisness career, too fucking boring. I rather get a crappy job in the math field, than in some place I do not like.

So there is no general answer for your question, I guess it depends how much awareness you have, about your talent and how much time you are willing to spend in order to improve at something that ain't really your thing.

Being bad at math doesn't necessarily mean your IQ is low/that you're stupid. It means you aren't able to access the quantitative applications used in mathematics, but this alone doesn't mean your IQ is low. I'm pretty bad at math and my IQ is in the 99th percentile. Don't feel like shitto OP

I don't get this distinction that you people make between "easy careers" and "hard careers".
In my case at least, I feel a lot more comfortable with numbers and science than with anything verbal related (despite verbal reasoning allegedly being my best skill according to a professional test I took).
There are careers that some people would dare to call "objectively easy". I think that psychology falls into this category, as well of business of course.
However, some of these "easy" careers require a lot of reading. Frequently mocked careers such as Gender Studies, Political Science and the like force you to spend most of your time reading. I find reading extremely hard, even more so than math, programming or physics (although the reason could very well be that reading doesn't motivate me as much).
My point is: why do you guys dismiss the difficulty of anything that focuses heavily on reading and say that only pure math and physics are hard? Do you actually have any proof that they are harder or are you just talking about bullshit that you don't know anything about?

Because in STEM you have to read a lot too. Obviously less than shit like Political Science but still a lot. Also, you have to solve problems, which requires a different perspective on the concepts.
And STEM can be very much verbal too. Jews excel in STEM and they are mainly verbal, whereas sucking spatially. The thing with STEM is that, differently from the Humanities (where you can only go verbally), you can take both the verbal and spatial route.

Yep. I'm taking intro to engineering at the moment and I feel stupid.

I barely have any math background yet (I'm in pre-calc). I have no science background either. Last science course I took was AP environmental science in the 07-08. Physics was taken in 04/05, freshman year of high school. I took nothing while in college. Yes, I'm a second degree student.

I do not think like an engineer at all yet and I feel stupid because of it. I know that I don't have skills and way of thinking needed yet because I have very little experience thinking in this manner. I also know that the more work I put in the more I will start to adapt and think in a way that's more akin to that of an engineer.

>Do you actually have any proof that they are harder or are you just talking about bullshit that you don't know anything about?
There is usually only one, narrowly defined correct answer to a physics, mathematics or chemistry exam question. As for political science, gender studies and business, clever wordplay and what we call "common sense" may net you a passing - or even respectable - grade.

>Have you ever felt you were too dumb to study math or science?
I do, I don't know how turing or newton or einstein did the things they do, I doubt I'll ever come to such Ideas.
I'm a worthless human being.

I am in a network security bachelors program.

It's seriously hard keeping up with all of the autists in my classes.

I was a stoner all throughout high school and I never had any academic confidence. After I started pursuing my interests in IT that all changed.... for the worse.....

it's good for remembering facts/definitions, labeling of diagrams and proofs you have to know.
i think the card making is beneficial because you have to summarize the material you want to learn first. i don't have anything against using a deck made by someone else, but you definitely miss out part of the learning cycle process

If you're that much of a quitter, you'll never cut it in business. Being in business requires a type of personality that is just delusional enough to have the confidence that you will succeed. Yet, you have to be realistic enough to know you will fail if you don't work your ass of and to be able to make good strategic decisions.

No, I'm not some butt-hurt business major. I'm working in STEM myself, but full disclosure: I personally do have much respect for successful entrepreneurs. The only reason I didn't start my own company was because I thought the risks weren't worth the rewards. Which is the same as lack of confidence in some ways.

Kek. Op is probably fine, but this guy right here is a massive brainlet.

keep it up

PhD chemist here.

Felt dumb as fuck and wanted to avoid all math and science but changed majors slowly, seven times until finally graduating and went to gradschool. It was incremental.

I'm literally not a brainlet though.

If that's true, you're definitely an exception. It's really rare to find a high IQ person who is bad at math.

I have several friends in the 98% percentile or higher who are also bad at math. One has an IQ of 152 and is as bad at math as one can be. Seeing that there are plenty of IQ tests that don't include numerical items, it's very possible.

IQ is comprised of like 5 different tests. The test that is the most linked to mathematical ability is the spatial reasoning test. You can bomb on that and do exceptionally well on the short term memory, processing, and verbal reasoning tests, which will then raise your overall IQ score.

i have an IQ of 1155 but i still have a hard time getting into math and chem/phys, how do i fix it?
is it cause of ADHD? will ritalin or some shit like that help?

ive just got enrolled in a Computer Engineering major and i dont know what to do...

Please Veeky Forums, guidance
I just dropped out of physics major cause it somehow didn’t feel right
I’m debating whether to enroll in pure maths or compsci/software development with specialisation in machine learning

What would be the smarter option?

Machine learning is the hottest shit right now, go for it.

>1155
meme or typo?

Reading usually is required for a memorization task such as remembering key parts of something in the book and writing about it on a essay (usually your bulk of evidence for your claims/arguments) or its used for pure memorization where you are tested on what you know on a scantron. Math/physics especially at the higher level requires you to understand the material, internalize it through practice problems and then apply/build upon it for more advanced topics this is a much higher cognitive function than just pure memorization and regrugitation on a history exam or some other humanities thing its also been proven that humanities majors and "soft sciences" have lower average IQs than people in hard sciences or math or CS.

If you're struggling with pic related you should quit anything related to math or sceince

115, typo'd, sorry
see? thats how ADHD fucks your life

>The test that is the most linked to mathematical ability is the spatial reasoning test
That's pretty flawed. I have high quantitative and verbal IQs while being very spatially mediocre. On the other hand, I have a friend whose spatial IQ is very high and is slightly slower than me quantitatively.

>Have you ever felt you were too dumb to study math or science?
Yes.

>How did you overcome it?
Electrocity is magic. I'm a chemical, why the fuck do I have to take a course about circuit analysis? All the electricity I need is covered by the power rating and termo. Fuck the faggots who decided to waste my time.

>Is it better to accept that you're not smart and switch to a business major instead?
If you have to ask, the answer is probably yes.

I've got good spatial reasoning, but I'm quite bad at algebraic or arithmetic problems which don't really have a good visual representation, but in things like geometry I am extremely good

spatially very mediocre*
So much for the high verbal IQ. Maybe I'm not as smart as I think I am.

Given your case and mine (I'm not bad, but I'm not great at geometry either), the spatial IQ-mathematical ability correlation shouldn't even be a thing. At least not the only correlation. Unless most verbally-oriented people actually aren't good at math. Which is very plausible, but not a priori. I think the case is that verbalfags mostly pussy out at the first real mathematical challenge they encounter and end up in shit like law or other humanities, whereas spatialfags have no way other than hard STEM.

Software eng is a lot of group work, so if you do it make sure you're strategic about your group so you don't get a bunch of retards

It's so you can use accurate intuition when looking at an electrical circuit and decide if itll kill you before plugging it in

"is there bare metal exposed?"
"is there a capacitor or inductor in here?"
"is it plugged into the mains?"
If no, looks safe to me.
Glad I had to take a course for that...

i always hated the idea, but then later in the course i got into it and it was fine. not a great student, and i'm not all that bright but once i saw how to do stuff with it, it became much more interesting and easier to learn