Math problems are a problem for job-seekers, employers say

[zipplewrath]

187. Ha. I'm sure it feels that way.

It is probably a combination of things.

1) Incredibly high standards. I'm not saying that everyone is qualfied to be a math scholar. But math (predominatley arithmatic and algebra) are "easy" and mostly a matter of memorization. Can I give you problems/questions that are difficult? Sure, but that's true of almost any discipline. But the fundamentals of arithmatic, geometry, and algebra are pretty basic and easy and working with them in the common world is fairly straight forward. Look at the things in the article of the orignal post. Calculating densities, converting from feet to inches, these were the problems the applicants were struggling with and they just aren't that complicated. If your dad was a "math whiz", your standards for being "good" at it may be bit high. I play alot of golf. I'm probably in about the top 30 - 40% of golfers based on score. But if I compared myself to ANY professional golfer, I'd "suck".

2) You probably hit some wall, and from your description probably early on. I of course can't know what it might have been, and it would probably take me several sessions to figure it out. But I've found these "walls" in several students and they often actually aren't that big of deal, unless one never gets beyond them. I worked with one child who was struggling with long division. We went over and over it. I tried several different ways. We started with VERY easy problems and then moved on to more difficult ones. I began to notice that what I considered "easy" and "hard" didn't correlate to their abilities. Finally, almost by accident, I found out that the child thought that "guessing" at any point in the process was "wrong". Heck, a fundamental aspect of long division is "guessing" and seeing if the resulting value is too high or low. But a strong student teaching a weak one will appear to "know" the right answer immediately because they "guess" so well/quickly. I then started showing her OUT LOUD my thought process (and yes, I guessed wrong on purpose almost every single time) so she could see not only that guessing was "okay" but that it was part of the larger process of getting TO the right answer. Once freed to guess and be "wrong" she took off.

And the truth was, and the reason she seemed to be able to do "difficult" problems more easily than some "easy" ones was because through her struggle, she had managed to "memorize" a very large number of multiples. Unfortunately not "ALL" of them, but there were certain, large, combinations that she knew quite well. Served her well once she knew she could "guess".

3) Proofs. If I could rewrite the text books, students wouldn't even do proofs until the second "semester" or second year or something. We teach proofs in geometry and algebra almost right up front. Phooey. Proofs are hard. Especially at the middle school level we start trying. Students barely have any grasp of logic, or structured processes yet. There are whole classes of problems that can be taught common solution techniques. Once mastered, you can REVISIT the source of these techniques by searching out how they are derived and "proven".

4) Repetition. A key component to teaching math (and many other subjects from vocabulary to golf) is repetition. And really there is no way around it. Yes, some "quicker" students "need" less of it. But everyone benefits from repetition, even (or especially) the best students. As a teacher of course one needs to try to keep variety in repetition. Present the same problems in different forms, make it communal, make if "fun", that kind of thing. But there is no real substitution for doing the same problem over and over, in slightly different ways, to understand the problem from "all" aspects.

5) And probably the biggest one I find, and I've found it in my wife, you didn't master all the myriad of different solution techniques presented to you in school. Problems can be solved in multiple ways (there is a very humoruous proof of 2 + 2 = 4. Well, funny to math majors. It is quite tortured.) But you probably have a core set of solution techniques you are using to engage math. You have ways of figuring out how long a trip might take, and it uses fractions, even if you don't realize it. You probably have a set of "combinations" that you fundamentally know, so if you have to scale things, you can do it quickly. First time I was in Italy, my wife had a hard time converting the old "Liras" into dollars. It was something like 1300 lira to the dollar. She just couldn't figure it out. Finally after several attempts to help her, we stumbled upon this technique. I taught her to "move the decimal point" over 3 places to the left. NOW, everything was 30% off.
She had developed skills over the years for estimating sale prices (albeit only a few like 10, 25, 30, and 50). It was a bit inexact, but it worked. (There is a joke on the old Mary Tyler Moore show where "Ted" is suppose do be dumb, but he is quite wealthy. Ask him anything about numbers and he gets confused. "Murray" would always "help" him by suggesting he "put a dollar sign in front of it" upon whence he solved the problems immediately).

You're probably alot better at math than you know. Okay, maybe not as good as your father. But don't confuse struggling with a structure course that is trying to teach you a wide variety of solution techniques, with being fundamentally deprived of the basic skills to handle a wide variety of problems. There's alot of room between being "above average" and "the best".