Mathematics has always been terrifying. Some moments before the math exams are confused in one corner to read the Koran and pray to Allah to reduce the weight of this fat exam, while others are as late as possible so as not to suffer from those moments before the exam. In physics the same thing happened for the same reasons, and in high school the victims of mathematics and physics were the most relapse of their classmates in other subjects, everywhere mathematics was found there was fear.
Well, you may not know that, but that case has a name, "Math Anxiety", which is not a disease in the sense, but it is a state of anxiety that is characterized by turbulence and tension in the face of mathematics, whether questions in exams or being in a lesson Mathematics itself or even just thinking about mathematics, this leads to negative behavior towards mathematics, which means avoiding everything related to it as much as possible, and this may lead to a low level of a person in mathematics, losing confidence in the ability to perform mathematical operations even if intelligent Of course.
Mathematics at home
“When we lose confidence in our ability to perform calculations, it strongly affects our financial and medical tasks, which need some basic mathematical skills to make them work,” says Ellen Peters, a professor of psychology from Ohio University. . In fact, Peters points to an important point that we do not pay much attention to in our daily lives. We basically associate our abilities in mathematics with the result that appears at the end of the school year, but that is not true.
In her experiments, the results of which were recently published in two separate studies by the PNAS, Peters tried to correlate a person's confidence in his or her ability to perform mathematical tasks with his or her ability to manage his or her financial and medical affairs, especially in some pathological conditions that required a lot of work. Like SLE, a severe disease that occurs when our immune system attacks our tissues and organs. (1)
"Some life tasks require degrees of persistence and persistence. We need to repeat them repeatedly even if they are worrying and tired," explains Maidan, a psychology professor . "People who are more confident in their athletic abilities are more likely to continue." Hard. For example, in the case of an incurable disease, the patient is in constant need to deal with drugs, understand the risks and benefits, as well as need to adjust his choices in health insurance and treatment expenses and appointments to go to doctors and lifestyle changes, help math skills at that point.
On the other hand, there is a constant need for mathematical skills in organizing our finances, paying bills and distributing expenses to material requirements, from the needs of the store through the exercises, lessons and books of children, then paying taxes and organizing government transactions to our attempts to save for the future, all this needs. To mathematical skills that can sometimes be advanced in order to implement a plan that is strong enough to control the movement of money in your life.
Less math, more money
So you might be surprised by the results of Peters' experiments, which came to say that those in a sample of about 5,000 people who got the final grade in their math tests but were less confident in their mathematical abilities lost $ 94,000 of their annual income Compared to those with the same results but more confident in their ability to perform mathematical operations, do you see that? The two groups have the same abilities, but the group with "math phobia" has lost all that, just because its members do not trust enough in their abilities. "If you are not confident in your mathematical abilities, all the mathematics of the world will not benefit you," she told Meedan . ! ".
So it's not about the ability of one of us to perform mathematics, it may be a smart student, but for some reason it is disturbed by the presence of mathematics in its surroundings, some researchers believe that this may be related to genetic aspects, where a team led by Chi Wang from the University of Ohio, several years ago They have used groups of twins to examine their similarity in the dread criteria of mathematics, which may mean that it is hereditary because similar twins are close in their genetic makeup. (2)
But the results of this study say that the rate of the presence of the genetic factor did not exceed 40%, and with the absence of many studies examining that particular case, this percentage is likely to decline, and therefore the environment and the surrounding conditions can have a significant impact, starting from the conditions of birth Up to the parenting method, there was already a previous indication that parents with math phobia were able to export the same problem to their children, which is acceptable in the context that math phobia drives you to avoid it as much as you can, which means neglecting your children in that area, and besides transferring this kind Of fear them it M may be affected.
The problem we face here is that this early phobia of mathematics, starting from a young age, can be inflated with time, and this is reflected in the attitude of students towards mathematics, they avoid it, and ultimately their efficiency decreases as they age, it is like the so-called "effect" Snowball, which means that if you hit a small snowball from the top of the mountain, it collects the snow around it as you descend down and reach the base with a huge volume and momentum, as well as math phobia, it starts small and then reaches its peaks in the university age and its aftermath. But it is possible, in the words of Peters in her interview with the " field ", sports phobia It is something that can be dealt with.
What is the relationship of writing to mathematics?
One solution - from Peters' point of view - is to motivate people, whether they are students at school, university, or ordinary people, to “Values Affirmations,” a psychological technique for which the subject is spending enough time on tasks to grasp the integrity of his position. Being ready to work on a problem and improve its self-image, many theories in clinical psychology argue that such self-assertion techniques are effective in overcoming many types of anxiety and behavioral problems, and at the level of students may be clearly effective.
On the other hand, Peters argues, one of the best ways of this kind of assertion of values is expressive writing, or drawing for children, a way that turns feelings and desires into words or drawings on paper, at first glance it seems so simple to think It is ineffective, but a commitment to a continuous program of expressive writing may have an unprecedented impact on the development of your problems with mathematics over time, according to many studies in this area.
“This puts the snowball effect in another direction,” she says, noting that in previous experiments, “asserting values” has been able to allay students' fear of mathematics, leading to good results in subsequent assessments. With a whole semester, that opens the door to a growing familiarity with mathematics that grows with age, as if the snowball here is working toward improving our math abilities over time.
In these experiments, more than 200 students were subjected to a mathematics course, and during the course a group of them was exposed to two sessions of "confirmation of values", and the idea is to take each of them 10-15 minutes to write a set of six values of his own believe, things such as relationship with family and friends, Spiritual values, religious values, interest in science, and the pursuit of knowledge. Each of them was asked to classify them as important to them, then they were asked to write a topic about the values they gave the lowest score, then answer the question of why those values might be more important. For other people? The results suggest that those who underwent the value assurance process showed a clear improvement in mathematics.
| Ellen Peters, Professor of Psychology, Ohio University (networking) |
"It's about the amount of confidence in your computational skills," Peters assured us, adding that this can be counterproductive when we use it to raise people's confidence in their math abilities beyond their real abilities, because it can be bad for their lives, because they will make mistakes without To know that. But in the end, math phobia can be dealt with and mitigated, which may strongly help to improve our future lives, academic and public.
Fossilized minds
The idea, then, is to realize that there is a problem.Our success in dealing with our fears about mathematics stems from our ability to separate three factors, our misconceptions (math is difficult, you will fail) and our feelings that are built upon (fear) and directly affect our behavior (I will not go To the math lesson today), and once you begin to grasp the problem, you will gradually overcome these ideas, or at least neglect them and continue to work to improve you anyway, because you know that they are just ideas that have nothing to do with reality.
Physics, English or mathematics are things we study to pass exams, but they are not really designed, but designed to support our minds.
This develops an ability to embrace the notion of "growing with time". In fact, one of the problems we face with mathematics relates to our convictions about ourselves. You might mistakenly imagine that your mind is a fixed system designed to perform certain functions with steady abilities that do not change over time, so you are convinced that there is no need for resistance for a better level. In mathematics, it is almost for you, your abilities are constant and will not develop.
On the other hand, this is just a conviction, not a scientific fact.Once you change it, it becomes a mechanism for thinking about the possibility of growth (Growth Mindset), and that with the right exercise, our abilities can become better by doing enough, your results will improve progressively. But you also have to realize that nothing comes at once, and over time what you work on will quietly improve.
“Our mathematical skills are also important outside the classroom,” said Peters. “Our understanding of this may help us work beyond our problem with mathematics. In fact, that point goes beyond the boundaries of mathematics to everything else. We treat what we study as something outside of this world - physics, English or mathematics - for example - are things we study to pass exams, but it's not really designed for that. It is designed to support our minds in order to achieve the best possible gain from every moment in our lives, as happily as possible.