[ SECRET POST #2450 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2450 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 031 secrets from Secret Submission Post #350.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

09. http://i.imgur.com/dVeXrSM.jpg

[forgottenjester]

I haven't seen that but it would throw me out too if I thought it didn't fit the character. You say someone like Phoenix Wright is bad at math and doesn't like it I'll believe you even if it isn't my personal headcanon. You say Tony Stark doesn't like math and I will laugh as a backbutton away.

I never really got the hate for math, honestly. It's a little boring, to me at least, but that doesn't really warrant me hating it. *shrug*

[(Anonymous)]

Idk, I've run across a ton more people who are iffy [I can do it, but I don't like it] or down right hate it than people who actually *like* it.

[(Anonymous)]

If it's obviously out of character, sure, but your math-boner doesn't change the fact that there are probably just as many people out there who dislike it and find it boring. It's not even uncommon on fiction. I don't think the majority of characters we find in fics are programmers or electronics wiz's, so I'm leery of your assertion.

[(Anonymous)]

It would depend on the character if it threw me or not. But it's not guaranteed to because I know for a fact that one can be really good with electronics and programming and have no aptitude for maths at all. That not only describes me but most of the programmers I work with.

[(Anonymous)]

I think math would be appreciated more if we had more great math teachers worldwide. In my experience, most of them suck and fail to get the basics across. Or just outright tell their students that they think they're dumb and won't get it anyway (true story).

After I had two great math teachers in a row I came to like it quite a bit. At least you had something to do during classes.

[(Anonymous)]

If you like fic where characters like math, read McShep. They even get turned on by it.

[(Anonymous)]

I started a fanon that my favourite character is really good at math, and it's sticking!

[(Anonymous)]

I am really good with electronics - fixing things, building things - and I am SO bad at math.

[dinogrrl]

Heh, I don't write many characters as being good at math because, well...for one thing, I see that symbol and the first thing that came to my mind was "Awesome! A secret about music!" because that's the shape of a modern string instrument's f-hole...

Yeah, yeah, I know, fail :D.

[(Anonymous)]

You can hate maths and still be good at it, I imagine.

But, yeah, someone being all 'God, I hate maths, I'm so terrible at it' if they're in a field that clearly requires aptitude for maths, that'd be highly irritating.

Tbh, though, if a person's career has nothing to do with maths, it's more likely than not that they don't like maths. I can only remember a handful of students at my school who seemed to enjoy maths, but NO-ONE ever said it was their favourite subject and many people listed it as their least favourite.

[raaj]

I don't find it suspicious, but I usually find it pretty dull and boring to note as a character trait. Like one anon said, dislike or ambivalence toward math is common enough that it's just not interesting as a character trait or joke most of the time.

OP

[(Anonymous)]

On further reflection, "hate math" is easily conflated with "hate math class", which is fully compatible with any level of math ability. Shows what I get for impulsive secrets.

...And I guess I'm convinced that a lot of people who think they're bad at math are not actually bad at math. They may be bad at math class, they may be bad at arithmetic or conic sections or remembering trig identities, they may have been conditioned to freeze up and panic when the subject comes up -- but that doesn't make them intrinsically bad at math.

Secret 9 - Fanfiction

[transcriptanon]

[Picture is black text over a white background.]

Math is a beautiful thing. A lot of people like math, and even more are perfectly okay with it.

I am suspicious of fanfic assertions that characters hate math. I usually think the authors are projecting.

If a character is good with electronics or programming? Then even if math isn't their favorite hobby, they're not bad at it.

[feathercircle]

One of my best friends has severe dyscalculia and he's the biggest computer and electronics fanatic I know.

Perhaps you need good math skills to do the really cutting-edge, innovative stuff, but I don't think basic programming and/or playing around with electronic devices takes nearly as much talent in that area as you're suggesting here- at the very least, nothing that you can't manage with a good calculator.

(Now, college-level biology on the other hand... that does require a certain level of comfort working with numbers.)

[ariakas]

Eh, throughout my science degree we had to take several years of math, physics and statistics, and you would be surprised by the number of people who can do math - are quite good at it, in fact - but who still hate it because it's dry/boring/irrelevant to their future career (these were primarily future microbiologists/biochemists/medical professionals) and yet they have to take second year calculus for no goddamned discernible reason because the math department needs more dollars.

[(Anonymous)]

It depends on the character. If, say, Tony Stark was said to hate math, well, I suppose since he's more of an inventor you could say he enjoys using his toys more than he does designing them, and math is a means to an end. A necessary evil. He's never, as far as I'm aware, been objectively shown to love it.

Or somebody could be like me I suppose. I was good at math. I could rig any equation to do what I wanted--it was never within the parameters of what my teachers or professors wanted, so I was always royally pissed off that I couldn't do as I pleased, because math is so precise and they want you to learn the process and I'm going off on a tangent--but I absolutely fucking loathed it.

Or they could just be bad at math and hate it.

Dude, I suck at math and I like it...wait, does this happen often?

[nyxelestia]

Maybe it's just the fandoms I frequent but the the characters always seem to be very good at math.

...maybe it's because I'm mostly into scifi fandoms? Is this a problem in non-scifi fandoms?

[(Anonymous)]

I have a character who is forever at odds and is hateful of her Mighty Nemesis, Maths. Of course, she also has a severe learning disorder due to a traumatic brain injury, so math is always going to elude her.

I, on the other hand, love math.

[(Anonymous)]

If they're like, an astrophysicist I might wonder how they got so far, moreso than electronics and engineering. But otherwise, math doesn't seem very well loved in most places I look, so I'm usually not surprised I guess.

Me, I love math, even if it got REALLY DIFFICULT (sup, third year anything) and slightly-above-basic math is like second nature to me, but I know the feeling isn't universal.

Some of math IS beautiful though...

[(Anonymous)]

I hate math. I'm actually pretty good at it, but I had a long, bad history with struggling with math. I finally got a good teacher that explained it in a way that finally clicked, but by that time the damage had been done.

I like programming, though - so you can be "technical" without liking math.

TL;DR: hate math != bad at math.

[(Anonymous)]

math.... MATH!?!?! Don't fucking talk to me about math. You have any idea how much torture I've been through because of math? That shit just does not stick with me. At all. I've always been in advanced placement classes for stuff like English and History, but with math I'm always in the remedial classes. Also, side-note to self: why the fuck did I take physics? What the fuck was I thinking?!?

Okay. I'll always be bitter about math. I always sucked at math in high-school. In college you need a 'C' grade or better in order to transfer, and I went through hell. I tried, I ACTUALLY TRIED. I spent hours on homework. I spent $80 for the access code for the online shit we had to do. I put so much sweat and tears into it... and I still got a 'D' which is no good to me. The study guide and the test were completely different. We were allowed one index card to write whatever formulas or info to use on the test, so naturally I put the formulas needed for the problems on the study guide. Come test time the index card means fuck all because he threw in everything else that was NOT on the study guide for the test instead.

So now I'm in math again. I have a test tomorrow, and I have to deal with the 4th and 5th dimension or some shit. Hypercubes and hyperhypercubes and other shit I never hear about unless it's in a math class. So excuse me as I go figure out how the hell to perceive the 7th dimension with my 3 dimensional mind.

[(Anonymous)]

You can be really good at something, it still doesn't mean you have to like it. And actually, I was good at math in school to the point that my teacher thought I would continue higher studies in that field. But I hated math, I just found it boring as all hell (and I guess I wasn't good enough to put my math skills into a use that could have involved more imagination). I get that in fics there might be characters who are just so advanced in math that it will pretty much guarantee they like math (to have put in the effort to be so good), but it rubs me the wrong way when you can read this secret as basically saying 'those idiots who just don't get math, well obviously they are the ones who don't like it'.

[(Anonymous)]

I've never been good at maths (lowest result in school, below even chemistry, which I'd originally failed first time around), but I love the concept of it. A language in which to frame ideas so that you can derive an objectively true answer from them (well, providing you've framed it correctly, anyway).

I mostly encountered it in earth sciences, which I struggled hugely with because of their dependence on math and my, ah, complete inability to translate it, but I could see the shape of what it was doing. When people put up the actual event (glacier moving) and then the equation, and then broke down what the elements of the equation were referring to, I could start to see what math was and what it could do. And you can go all the way up and down the scales with that, the numbers and the shape of how they interact can have the whole universe in it, and that's pretty much the coolest thing ever.

But I still can't read an equation to save my life. When I see stuff happening, I translate it into words, not mathematics. Put the glacier up and I can tell you exactly what it's doing, but put up the equation of the glacier moving and I haven't a damn clue.

It's frustrating, in the same way trying to read a language you don't know is frustrating. You know the meaning is there, and the language that's shaping it could be a work of pure art, but you can't read it, so it's wasted on you.

For all that, though, I love seeing maths used well. I love the idea that there are people out there who can do what I can't, who can look at the numbers and see a universe in them. People who can extrapolate out into the universe based on the underlying grammar of it, and get a sense of the great big shapes of things. I love that it exists, even if I can't personally use it?

I don't know if that makes any sense, though.

[(Anonymous)]

There's a difference between hating math and not being good at it. You seem to be conflating the two.