Re: Math anxiety--perhaps recovery is possible
Joan
Sandra, you wrote:
I'm understanding that playing around with, say, ball bouncing, quilt making, graph paper drawing, map making and reading are like singing to yourself or toodling around on the piano (more or less). Watching ripples on a pond or looking at a pine cone is like listening to music.
When I do these things, I'm in one of the halls of the world of math. These activities may be the extent of my experience of math, but it IS within the world of math.
For it to be math, I don't have to feel that I need to push on into the "abstract modeling tools" or using notation unless I darned well feel like it. And it's okay.
Joan
> Someone can feel the patterns dancing, and think in that "music" and BENow this is making sense.
> mathematically minded and still not read mathematical notation.
>
> And I'm positive that the notation will make more sense to someone who knows
> what math-music sounds like AFTER they're familiar with it than if you just
> try to start (as school does) with the notation itself, as though the
> notation IS math; as though musical notes on paper WERE music. They are not.
> They're a graph of music, an abstract modeling tool (to borrow Keith's
> phrase).
>
I'm understanding that playing around with, say, ball bouncing, quilt making, graph paper drawing, map making and reading are like singing to yourself or toodling around on the piano (more or less). Watching ripples on a pond or looking at a pine cone is like listening to music.
When I do these things, I'm in one of the halls of the world of math. These activities may be the extent of my experience of math, but it IS within the world of math.
For it to be math, I don't have to feel that I need to push on into the "abstract modeling tools" or using notation unless I darned well feel like it. And it's okay.
Joan