General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Common Core teaches Gettysburg Address with no context or background. Unbelievable. [View all]Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)He "taught" us matrix algebra without context. It was all "multiply this row by that column." It was at that point that I decided I'd had it with math, mostly because I couldn't figure out why in hell I should multiply this row by that column. That experience, that convinced me I just didn't get math, and the resulting decision, changed the direction of my academic career.
I subsequently taught myself enough math to make it through a about 15 credits of college & graduate-level applied statistics, but at least I could figure out applications for the statistics, so I had some srt of organizing theme for my learning.
Then at some point years later I didn't have access to a computer lab & statistics software, and needed to do some factor analysis problems. I actually wrote a Maimum-Likelihood Estimator factor analysis program in an ancient dialect of basic for a CP/M machine, and had to learn matrix algebra to do it. Once I had a reason to learn it, it wasn't hard.