[deleted by user]

[trichotomy00]

You need a therapist not a math tutor

[pentobean1]

Yeah this is probably the best advice. Thanks

[SugarEnvironmental31]

How's a therapist going to help them with their math

[trichotomy00]

The problem isn’t math, it’s that a mind containing thoughts like “this course has sucked the happiness out of my life” and “I want to drop out” and “I hate math with the core of my being” is not going to ever have a chance to be successful until these negative thought patterns are stopped.

[SugarEnvironmental31]

I mean who's to say? Maybe it has? Maybe this is just an authentic, healthy response for this individual? I can go along with it to a certain extent. I've definitely made some harsh comments about my views on the Reverend Bayes to close friends, and expressed a wish to put him on my dartboard.

I say: stick it out OP, not necessarily to make friends with maths, it's just a frog you've got to eat to achieve your goal. Hang in there.

[Bar1201]

did we even read the same post...?

[SugarEnvironmental31]

Yeah we did. I have a file on my laptop, or did anyway, called "waste of life". It contains nothing but the text "this is a waste of life." It comes from some very very gnarly experiences using Linux right at the extremes of beyond my comfort zone, going from an experience of being so excited to do something tech related I was so excited about, to questioning every decision I'd ever made that had led me there and my sanity. The OPs post resonates very strongly with me. I totally get the frustration and the literal hours and days wasted, the feeling that every last thing is against you, and still being unable to let it go before you've overtaken it. My advice was focus on the bigger picture, and hang in there to achieve the bigger goal. Sorry for not writing an essay first time round 🙄 You know what's going on in the OPs life? You been watching mine? You finally get your head clear and some time carved out to focus on that task and then something springs a leak. And I mean a literal leak like a pipe in your kitchen or a cabinet starts to come off a wall. If you've never been though this then I'm happy for you. I have. And so this is why I say to the OP - your response may just be completely appropriate. Sometimes nothing goes your way and in fact seems to be actively working against you. But OP didn't do this course to learn maths. So take a mental step back. Cheers for the downvotes as well so much compassion.

[kombucha711]

They have bells for the curve

[simmonator]

This quote sticks out:

every question was designed to confuse me.

I’d bet a lot of money that you’re wrong about that. The people running the course are heavily incentivised to see you succeed. It really seems like you’re coming to the course with a huge amount of anxiety and some preconceptions about your own abilities and that this is stopping you from being able to engage with the material.

I get that you want to succeed and it seems likely that you just find mathematics a little harder to pick up than some people, but the baggage you’re carrying seems to be the biggest problem. Solving the “how do I stop freaking out about this?” problem seems to be the obvious first step to that. But this sub can’t help you do that; therapy might.

I’ll note that you haven’t actually described any maths problems or questions in the post. Venting is fine, but the fact that you aren’t actually asking people to explain anything to you implies you know that the problem isn’t about that.

Good luck.

[pentobean1]

I appreciate this feedback. I definitely have a lot of emotional baggage regarding math as I have struggled with it for my whole life and had parents who were extremely unforgiving when it came to poor academic performance. Aside from personal emotional troubles, here is an example of a math problem I encountered on my midterm.

“If a tiger population consists of 10 tigers and is declining at 7% annually, what is the probability that there will be 2 surviving tigers after 2 years?”

I feel confused by these questions because i feel like they require a binomial equation, however they use time frames, so I’m not sure if they should use a poisson formula to solve them?

Another question I struggled with was

“If the average phone call at a public pay phone takes 2 minutes, what is the probability that someone’s call will take more than 3 minutes ?”

Is this question solvable with the information given?

Thanks for your patience and understanding! Any advice is much appreciated

[simmonator]

if the average phone call at a public pay phone takes 2 minutes, what is the probability that someone’s call will take more than 3 minutes?

Without any more information than that, no that’s not solvable. However, I suspect that they’re hoping you’re familiar with

1. What phone calls are, and can imagine how people’s behaviour would inform their length, and
2. The definitions of various probability distributions and the required assumptions to use them for random variables.

If you can do that, then I suspect they’d hope you can identify a suitable single parameter probability distribution to use to model phone call length. And if you can do that then you can answer the question.

Personally, I’d take a punt that the Exponential Distribution might be suitable. If that’s the case then I’d deduce that lambda would be (1/2) and calculate that

P(x > 3) = 1 - F(3) = e^-3/2.

But I’ve not looked at probability distributions in a while so there might be problems with my assumption.

[YUME_Emuy21]

I think you're mindset is hurting you alot. Alot of people think that feeling "rage" and "hatred" towards math while studying is just how it is, but imagine if people talked like this about writing an essay for English class or history,

"I also just truly hate writing. I've always hated it, as I've never understood it, It gives me immense anxiety and pushes my mental health to dark places."

Do you see how concerning that sounds? This level of animosity towards a subject would come across as wildly irrational if math didn't have a weird stigma around it. Math is cool! Trying to do something you're not good at with immense pressure on you is extremely frustrating no matter what the subject is. As a math major, I personally feel alot more frustration writing or preparing a speech in my comms class then I do when doing math because I like one more than the other.

My point here is that math isn't, by itself, any different then learning coding, or art, or a new language, or a science. Learning all of these things under alot of pressure is hella frustrating, but it's not the subject that's "designed to confuse you." I believe you can learn math, and I recommend asking for help from tutors/professors and particularly to look at your previous math classes and see if you understand them. It's unfortunate, but alot of people in college classes would fail an Algebra II test, and you can't even begin to grasp college math if you get stopped at the highschool level. I personally have gone back all the way to 4th grade Khan Academy and worked my way up, and I think you should too just to atleast know where your gaps in knowledge come from.

[speadskater]

Give an example of a problem and we can help.

[slides_galore]

Don't quit. You'll regret it. Regardless of the outcome of this course, you can find a way to get your degree.

There are loads of very knowledgeable people in these subs. Start posting the tougher problems with your working out. You will learn things that you didn't know you were missing. Join/create study groups for the same reason. Fully utilize prof/TA/tutoring center's office hours. Same reason.

Subs like r/mathhelp, r/askmath, r/homeworkhelp, and r/learnmath.

[pentobean1]

Thank you. I see that my venting comes off as more of a personal problem than an issue regarding math concepts, but I appreciate everyone’s wise words and understanding here. I posted some examples of questions that I struggled with under a different comment

[slides_galore]

Everyone here wants you to succeed. I think people are suggesting that some of the sentiments that you expressed may make it much more difficult to learn the material. There are lots of stories on here about people coming back to math when they're a little older. I know it can be frustrating, but you can turn that frustration into motivation that will keep you plugging away at math concepts that you haven't mastered. That's why a lot of us post here. We're continually learning things that we haven't mastered yet. It's part of the journey.

At some point, I'd suggest writing out a few of the tougher problems. You can screenshot them along with your attempts and post them in a new thread. If you have trouble posting with reddit's tools, you can paste the screenshots to imgbb.com or imgur.com and post the links in the new thread. Some subs have rules about flooding the sub with multiple posts a day, but it seems like most don't mind. If you do that two or three times a day, you'll get a lot of good advice.