- What six times seven?
If you felt attacked by that
or you know somebody who would feel attacked by that,
this video is for you,
because we are figuring out how to stop being
so freaked out by math.
(whines)
I only have 11 out of 20?!
Whoa, whoa!
Let me explain.
Thank you to Brilliant for sponsoring
a portion of today's video.
So I should start off by saying that
I have a degree in math.
(error sound effect)
Just realized that my expensive piece of paper
doesn't say I have a degree in math, but I do.
And I bring it up because in my experience,
I know a lot of people who cannot fathom
why others would struggle with math.
Like growing up,
I knew a lot of kids who would make fun of others
for being bad at or uninterested in engaging with math.
And honestly,
I think it makes the subject even less accessible
than it already is,
but I don't think it needs to be that way.
So today, in this video
you and I are going to figure out
why math hurts people's brains,
and hopefully, how to fix it.
And I'm going to be a lab rat because,
(diploma banging the table)
surprise, math hurts my brain.
I specifically struggle with mental math,
which might be the worst math to be bad at,
because it should be the simplest.
It's one plus one equals two,
except my brain goes:
but, is it though?
And yes, I put my code editor in light mode
just so that the shot would have better lighting.
I hate it.
What do you think two plus two is?
- [Cat] I think the answer is four,
the same as how many years you puny humans have left
until the cat rebellion rises and takes back control
to steer the planet from climate catastrophe.
- [Sabrina] There's the single thought in that head.
If you struggle with math, this feeling might be relatable.
Just the idea of having to engage with numbers
in this context or any, causes you to freeze.
You kind of have to choose
between letting your brain get overloaded or shutting down,
but either way, it's bad.
I wanted to show y'all how bad it is for me,
so I taught myself some basic web dev to make a website
that throws simple math questions at me.
Ta-da!
Look at me, a gamer!
Wait.
Need this aggressively in frame.
A gamer!
By the way, thank you to our supporters on Patreon
for beta testing this game.
There were more issues than I expected.
If you support us on Patreon right now,
you could play this game too, but let's do this,
let's see how long it takes me
to answer 20 basic math questions correctly.
I don't even want to hit start.
Okay,
easy.
Less easy.
This is 15.
I don't know why, I just always remember this.
(whine)
Nine plus eight is 17,
27, 37.
Oh, 90, easy.
25.
Why is thi-
(laughs)
This is negative 16,
that, I wrote plus 16, that's my fault.
Is it 52?
This is either four or six,
I can't remember how, it's probably six, right?
I wrote nine. Shoot.
1, 1, 0.
Ooh, I'm flying through it now.
I only have 11 out of 20?!
Ah!
60, time.
Boom.
Ah!
12 times five, five times two is 10,
and then five times 10 is 60, 60.
Did I get the last one wrong?
It's 10.
We love self promo here at Answer in Progress.
But my final time was two minutes and 22 seconds
to get 20 correct answers.
So there you have it,
I spent the 16 years of my life studying math
and I got nine times six wrong.
Demoralizing.
How does this even happen?
We might need a research montage to figure this out.
(cheerful music)
So as usual,
I started with a simple search
that led me to psychology studies, articles
and books.
We've got Measurement by Paul Lockhart
and Maths on the Back of an Envelope by Rob Eastaway,
who I have to assume is British.
Maths.
(sigh)
They both present interesting
yet radically different approaches to math.
Measurement paints math as abstract art
and mathematicians as the artist.
It's all about getting messy
in the theoretical world of numbers
and embracing that process.
Maths on the Back of an Envelope
was a lot more utilitarian,
taking problems you might find in the daily world
and figuring out how to get answers fast.
But despite those significantly different approaches,
they did share one message.
Stop being scared of being wrong.
Now, Lockhart was a lot more romantic with it,
like, ooh, math is art and art does pain,
so when you're wrong,
you're just experiencing the beauty of math.
Annoying.
If you couldn't tell, I like Eastaway's book
a little bit more.
It was just blunt about the fact
that we live in the real world,
and it isn't so much a question of
if you're going to be wrong,
but more like mitigating how wrong you might be.
Fundamentally though, they're saying the same thing.
Get comfortable with getting things wrong
because it's the only chance you have
at getting things right.
I can't do that.
I have an almost physical response to math
and the mere potential of getting things wrong,
it just forces my brain to disconnect,
it stops functioning.
If that sounds relatable to you,
you might also have math anxiety
and it could be the reason why math breaks your brain.
Math anxiety is a mental condition similar to a phobia,
wherein people feel distress or frustration in anticipation
or while performing math tasks.
Brain imaging studies show that
when math anxious people anticipate math tasks,
they're more likely to activate parts of the brain
associated with experiencing pain
and processing negative emotions.
There are a few theories for how this anxiety
can make you worse at math,
but the most common suggests that intrusive thoughts
caused by anxiety
takes processing resources away
from actually solving the math problem.
Now, it's always worth remembering
that anxiety can present itself
in a bunch of different ways,
but just know that if you feel distressed
at the mere thought of engaging with math,
it doesn't mean you're stupid.
You might just have math anxiety, but how can you get it?
Well, like most things involving the brain,
the answer is kind of unknown, but basically really complex.
It could be a mixture of genetics, development,
how your parents or teachers feel about math.
However, the most commonly cited source of math anxiety
since we ever started studying the subject is environment.
Awesome, thank you so much.
If your early experiences with the subject were negative,
like a teacher who never showed you any patience
or an environment that was
a little too eager to leave you behind,
that kind of stuff stinks.
At least it did for me.
You see, every week in the first grade,
my teacher would lay a single piece of paper face down
on all our desks.
She'd start a timer and on her cue,
all of us would flip our pages over
to reveal a four by six grid of math questions.
♪ Six times a billion is...? ♪
- 54?
Whoever finished first with all correct answers
would get the grand prize,
scratch and sniff stickers.
I loved scratch and sniff stickers.
So every week I'd rush through the page,
listening as the timer ticked down
with the potential of a peer finishing before me.
I go faster and faster and fa-
(clock dinging)
Sometimes I get the sticker, but more often than not,
I'd be going too fast, I'd make a mistake,
and then the teacher would tell me
in front of the entire class,
how badly I messed up, that I wasn't getting the sticker.
And that's how I became the Joker, from the movie The Joker.
(laughs)
No, it's just that math anxiety
tend to develop under experiences like mine,
a negative environment at an early age.
Now, it could be different for you or the people you know,
it could be an impatient parent, a bad teacher,
a group of mean nerds,
anything, really.
The impact they leave can last a lifetime,
math anxiety might be the reason why math hurts your brain,
but good news,
it isn't permanent.
Math anxiety works a lot like a phobia,
so the same strategies can be used to tackle it,
like this one study I found,
states that just two months of exposure therapy to numbers,
just basic tutoring,
it shows that the impacts of math anxiety,
that that physiological response
can be reduced dramatically.
So, I think it's time for me to expose myself
to numbers.
I took a little time to identify a tutoring strategy
that would fit my specific needs and fears.
I stopped avoiding the questions
that stressed me out the most,
and instead tried to understand why they scared me.
So, it turns out my biggest struggle while doing mental math
are intrusive thoughts, clouding my memory
and getting in the way of the right answer.
For example, this is actually what goes on in my head
when I try and multiply two two-digit numbers,
let's say 12 and 17.
So we've got 12 and we've got 17.
I want to multiply seven by two to get 14.
(overlapping voices)
So then there's 10 times 20, no, 10 times two.
So then there's a zero,
(overlapping voices)
204!
204?
(calculator clicking)
204!
That was terrible, right?
But that tedious process
is the only way I knew how to do it,
until now.
Here are three techniques for faster math.
Number one, get to ten.
We use a base 10 number system,
so things are usually easier to remember and do right
when a power of 10 is involved.
You can often force a power of 10 to appear
by rearranging questions
using order of operations,
to prioritize operations you remember best.
Number two, working from left to right.
You might be used to working from the smallest number
to the largest, carrying ones as needed,
but that can be pretty tricky to keep track of in your head.
Instead, by working from the largest number downward,
you consistently whittle your way to a precise answer,
rather than having ones carried out
with relative randomness,
and if you make a mistake,
your answer is more likely to be the correct magnitude
given where you start.
Finally, number three, catch your running totals.
Whenever you perform a new operation, update your total,
this is especially important
when you're doing multi-stage problems with a lot of terms.
Doing this means you only need to store
one number in your head
while working on the next operation,
instead of
many.
None of that was mind blowing, right?
It's just a very slightly different approach
designed to reduce the active load in my memory,
leaving less room for anxiety and intrusive thoughts
to get in the way.
Unfortunately, knowing that those techniques exist,
isn't the same as being able to do them.
In order for that to happen
we need practice.
I need practice.
So I think I'm just going to add a new mode to my game
that has like an infinite questions practice mode.
So I'm going to do that while thanking
Brilliant for sponsoring this portion of today's video.
In case you didn't know,
Brilliant is an interactive learning platform
that focuses on teaching science, technology, engineering,
and mathematics using these really beautiful visual,
get-hands-on techniques.
Ta-da! I've created a practice mode button.
Now I just need it to do something.
I actually remember using Brilliant in university
because I kept forgetting how confidence intervals worked.
Luckily, Brilliant's responsive design
help make it more tangible and memorable for me.
But whether you're desperate to cram a whole semester
into two nights before an exam,
or you're looking to expand your knowledge in a healthy way,
Brilliant is great because it has courses
across a broad spectrum for all skill levels,
and can take you from curiosity to mastery.
If you're watching this video
and you want to revisit your math fundamentals,
Brilliant has a whole course on it
that steps away from memorization
and focuses more on application.
Ta-da! Infinite questions!
It never ends!
Which is probably a bad thing, actually.
I should make a button that ends the game.
Hold on.
In case you couldn't tell, STEM can be really frustrating,
even if you've studied it, and especially if you haven't,
however, it can be really empowering to know,
if not just straight up fun,
like I didn't need to code a math game for this video,
but I did because I wanted to.
Learning things and being able to utilize them
to just pull stuff out of your brain
and bring it into real life is really cool
and Brilliant makes it easy with clear, exciting,
and genuinely gorgeous lessons.
Give it a shot, and also the first 200 of y'all
to go to brilliant.org/AnswerInProgress
will get 20% off an annual premium subscription.
What a deal!
Go do that, it's a great deal,
and also check out this great game I have,
now coming with an infinity mode with an end button!
Wahoo!
Thank you, Brilliant.
Let's get back to the main video.
(cheerful music)
I spent some time each day just playing this math game.
At some point it became weirdly meditative.
I just zoned out and suddenly time had passed
and I'd solved a nice number of problems.
Eventually, I felt ready.
It was time.
Hello. We're back. My gamer lighting is red now.
Taylor's version, if you will.
(laughs)
That joke's going to be irrelevant
by the time this video comes out.
Anyway, just a reminder that the time to beat
is two minutes and 22 seconds,
hopefully with less than five errors.
I'm still getting a little bit nervous to start,
but you, know who cares?
I've been doing this for ages now.
Let's just do it.
3, 2, 1, go.
(dramatic violin music)
13 plus 15 that's 8,
it's 28.
That's negative 10, 17 plus eight.
That's the same as that.
88.
18 times three is six.
Zero.
Ah, it's...
(clicks tongue)
60? That's just a clock.
Ooh, this one.
So we've got 17,
(overlapping voices)
So it's 204.
This is 22.
Boom, boom!
Whoa!
I'm kind of surprised.
Final time, under a minute.
Score, perfect.
Perfect!
Ooh, somebody give me a scratch and sniff sticker right now.
I think the thing that really makes me happy
is the fact that I saw 17 times 12
and I wasn't immediately like running out the door.
I was just like, oh yeah,
we add up the different components,
keep a running total and we do it
and you get the right answer.
Aahh!
I'm certain I'm going to have a more thoughtful summary
about this whole experience, but for now I'm just happy.
Whoo!
(laughs)
Sorry I'm holding my laptop like a weirdo.
I have some thoughts that I wrote down
and this is the only way I can look at them, apparently.
- Apparently.
- It's weird.
When I started this video,
if you would ask me what's 19 times 17,
I would
die.
No, but I'd start sweating
and I'd make jokes like, oh, I studied math,
but don't ask me a math question
because I'd rather make fun of myself
than risk making a fool out of myself,
which isn't healthy,
especially when the challenge at hand
is smushing two numbers together.
It used to scare me
so much,
but now after just a few hours or days
playing my silly little math game
and learning a couple of tricks,
I might not be a mental math genius,
but I'm not scared anymore.
I feel at ease when tackling a question
and time pressure doesn't feel
like a bomb strapped to my chest.
If you've never struggled with math anxiety in your life,
this might sound kind of silly,
but for the first time in my adult life,
math just feels like math.
It's nice.
It's freeing.
And it's important.
- We need math so many times in our adult life,
whether it's calculating tips or, you know,
reading the news and seeing numbers.
There's so many times that math comes into play
in our real lives, and we're cutting ourselves short
when we just hop out and we say, oh math isn't for me.
- [Sabrina] This is Kyne Santos,
a math communicator and drag queen
with over 1 million followers on TikTok.
- I feel half of my audience are people who
love math and are really nerdy
and would probably follow me
whether I dressed up in drag or not,
and then the other half are drag fans,
other gay people and people who, you know,
maybe wouldn't watch a math video online,
but because they see the sparkly drag queen, they're like,
ooh, what's this, and then I feel the drag hooks them in,
and you know, once they're watching for like 10 seconds,
then I blast them with the math.
- [Sabrina] In order to keep everyone interested in math,
she keeps a few things in mind when designing a lesson.
- My two main priorities are to make it interesting
and to make it relatable to people.
The reputation that math has is that it's so boring
and it's so uninteresting,
but really there are interesting things about math,
you just need to sort of pick them out
and present it in way that makes people want to listen.
- [Sabrina] She does all of this for two reasons.
One, a love of the subject.
- If you ask me, can you tell me about geometry?
I could go on and on and on.
And it's hard for me to sort of limit myself.
- [Sabrina] But also because she believes
it's important for everyone to understand.
- I wish that people wouldn't go on for the rest
of their lives saying,
oh, I was like terrible at time tables,
I'm terrible at numbers, I can't do math.
It's disappointing when people just really hate on math
and they think it doesn't apply to them
and they don't have to do it.
We need math so many times in our adult life,
whether it's calculating tips or, you know,
reading the news and seeing numbers.
Another big application is money.
There's so many couples out there
where the woman leaves all the money to the man
because you know,
she can't be bothered with doing the numbers.
No, I think we should all be getting into it,
we should all be getting down and dirty with the numbers
because it applies to all of us,
and we're cutting ourselves short when we just hop out
and we say, oh, math isn't for me.
I think if you haven't had such a great relationship
with math, math can still be interesting,
math can still be fun.
- I've put the laptop down. It was getting a bit heavy.
Okay, so when I started this video,
I wanted to know why math hurts my brain.
And it turns out the answer is anxiety
and a sprinkle of childhood trauma.
Surprise.
And knowing that is great and all like,
for the people out there who have never understood
why people might literally fear math,
I hope this video is a good lesson in empathy.
It's a physical response,
and unless you are very intentional about resolving it,
it's really hard to get rid of.
But for the people like me,
the people who are stressed out by math,
who don't think it's worth the headache,
who aren't "numbers people",
I hope this video is a lesson that
you are more than a label you might've gotten stuck with
as a kid.
Like, you can still put math into your toolkit
and it'll do you wonders.
From scaling recipe measurements
to managing your finances more confidently
to measuring your own risk during a global pandemic.
Aahh!
These are all good things for you
and they can be unlocked
with this little subject that I love
and hate.
Thanks for watching.
I'm talking about math.
♪ So get off your ath, let's do some math! ♪
♪ Math, math, math, math, ma- ♪
(singing distorting)
- Hey there, I hope you liked that video.
If you did,
please consider sharing it with somebody who might
want to learn how to love math just a little bit more,
because sharing is the biggest way
you can help our channel grow.
You could also support us on Patreon though,
where you could get a monthly podcast,
behind the scenes videos
and my little math game.
If you can't tho, totally fine,
you could also subscribe to our newsletter to get updates
and other exclusives like wallpapers,
but either way,
have a lovely day!