Help Are there people here who were able to master mathematics without having an aptitude for it?

[somenone]

Can you please tell me about your path to mastering this science, maybe I will be able to learn something for myself, I will get some motivation to move on.

Currently, I am trying to fully master at least the school level (I still have problems with logarithms, I cannot do factorization, and many other things), I constantly make mistakes due to lack of attention, even when I try to concentrate. The worst feeling is when I constantly overlook an obvious easy solution, try to do something, but nothing works, and as a result it turns out that the decision was childish. Feeling like I can't do anything that requires even 1% creative thinking. Maybe there are people here like me.

 

[Azarlea123]

Even great mathematicians throughout history had problems with mathematics. I would advise you to think about it more as a game or a puzzle. Don't worry if you don't get a solution right away. Try to explore the things that interest you. Don't be ashamed to start from basics. Currently I'm trying to learn Category Theory on my own, which seems complete nonsense, but I know at some point it will click. There are also many nice Youtube channels about mathematics, even if they can be a bit too advance, they can be very interesting and explain everything visually.
Understanding logarithms may be hard because you don't understand substitution. If you work it slowly, you just have to remember a few formulas, which you can keep near until you memorize them. If you have any concrete questions or problems, feel free to ask.

 

[Forever Sleep]

Naturally, I am terrible at maths and I hate it. In secondary school, I had the most amazing teacher with the patience of a saint and I really improved- because he was such an excellent tutor. So much so that he moved me into the top set. At which point, the teacher may have just as well been speaking in Japanese (which I don't speak.) It was a terrible experience! So- I think a very good tutor in any subject can make us interested in the subject enough to improve but I'm not sure that apptitude and an innate sense of it can be taught.

I just feel like for a lot of things in life, there are certain things we have more talent for than others. I think we naturally gravitate towards those things. The worst thing is- I think people who do have a natural feel for picking up a skill or subject don't always understand the extent to which others struggle! It can almost feel like a blindness. The best teachers I found were the ones who remembered what it was like to struggle.

Still- the main thing I guess is to still have an interest in it. Certain things just utterly bewildered me, so I couldn't even see the point in trying!

 

[Kasumi]

I can really relate to you, I'm fine as long as there are rules to follow, formulas to apply, but as soon as you have to do some math magic that you just sort of,.. have to see the path I'm out.

I also frequently make little mistakes in easy things due to just overlooking them and it's really frustrating personally and it was even more so in school when I would fail tasks for a stupid little mistake.
To this day I cannot wrap my head around integrals and mathematical induction.
On the other hand I was able to learn anything that has rules to follow, e.g. matrix multiplication, etc
And I typically learned those by teaching myself, teachers were never able to explain things to me in a way I'd understand so most things (including things outside of math) I ended up teaching myself.

 

[Celerity]

I'm not a math genius, but I do pretty well when I apply myself. When I tried to learn some very tricky concepts in stats, I searched and searched until I found an explanation that clicked. YouTube is really great for this. Khan Academy can help too, but I have found that they often present the most standard, formulaic ways of going about a problem. Sometimes the right analogy is all it takes.

 

[CTB Dream]

This hpn cuz acadm tch math wrng, math lgc etc way think way slv simil prgrm etc, now see wat resn ai lrn math human no