Reply to: does maths ability have a shelf life?

[Spacecadet]

Re: does maths ability have a shelf life?

I think you lose interest in concentrating for long periods of time when you get older.

It is why people find it hard to learn musical instruments when they get older, they just cannot be arsed putting in the hours day after day. Snooker players always dive when they get into their 30s as they will not do the 6-8 hours practice a day.

It's not the lack of interest, it's the lack of time. Having said that, if you really want to learn something then you find or make the time.

Back to the original topic though: I had to revisit statistics for my masters degree after over 15 years and didn't find it much of a problem. Bit like riding a bike, you might be a little wobbly or unsure after a few years but you get back in the groove pretty quickly.

[minestrone]

I think you lose interest in concentrating for long periods of time when you get older.

It is why people find it hard to learn musical instruments when they get older, they just cannot be arsed putting in the hours day after day. Snooker players always dive when they get into their 30s as they will not do the 6-8 hours practice a day.

[xoggoth]

Yeh. Did a very mathematical subject at Uni, and used it for nearly 3 decades - calculus, some stats, trig, lots of numerical methods, curve fitting etc. Now #1 son keeps asking me about trajectories of missiles, shortest distance over curved surfaces etc for some PC game he's writing and I never have a clue, not immediately anyway.

[NotAllThere]

I have a maths degree from twenty three years ago, My son is currently studying physics. I can follow the maths in that I can go from one step to another, but can't do the actual reasoning. However, I think I'd just have to re-learn the identities and techniques and it would be fine. It's not totally alien.

I'm currently do a humanities degree. That's easier. It's just learning facts and putting arguments into a coherent form. The younger students find this considerably more difficult than use oldies - even those of us who last wrote an essay nearly 30 years ago.

[d000hg]

Also, I didn't know you could do maths and further maths as 2 of your 3 subjects... our school only let you do it as a 4th A-Level IIRC.


I did some practice S/STEP papers and was not exactly overly successful, but I didn't get an offer at Cambridge after all so luckily never had to take one for real.

[Sysman]

Does anyone remember S levels?

I've got one in Maths.

I failed the Physics one, probably because I ran out of time.

But then again, I got carried away on one question and was proposing a theory which I saw aired in a Scientific American article a few years later.

That article cheered me up (that I was right) and pissed me off (because I hadn't published first) at the same time.

[doodab]

Except then you have to fill some of the time at 1st-year uni while all the regular people catch up. Which is nice, do an elective in astronomy or something

We had a snooker club.

[doodab]

There is some anecdotal evidence that maths ability does decline with age, in the sense that most of the great mathematicians did their best work by their early 20s, but in terms of being able to learn and apply existing techniques I think, like fitness, it's really a question of practice, so someone who has been performing at a high level continuously will have an advantage over someone who has a 10 year hiatus.

[d000hg]

But you study twice as much maths, which if you are going to uni to study maths or physics makes a lot more sense than filling up the time with something else.

Except then you have to fill some of the time at 1st-year uni while all the regular people catch up. Which is nice, do an elective in astronomy or something

[d000hg]

When I did it you didn't do M & FM in parallel, you did 2X as many maths lessons and finished M in the first year, then FM in the 2nd year.

You can no doubt fiddle it a bit, but the point is you do 2X as many modules and therefore cover far deeper stuff. View it as "double maths" if you prefer

[doodab]

Buy you don't do A-level and a degree at the same time in the same subject. One follows on from the other.

Seems like a cheat for people who want 3 A-levels but don't want to study 3 subjects.

But you study twice as much maths, which if you are going to uni to study maths or physics makes a lot more sense than filling up the time with something else.

[VectraMan]

Couldn't you claim the same about A-level and a degree? Further maths builds considerably - if you came out of the main A-level with a solid grounding you wouldn't think it WAS any harder, but if you managed to get through the regular A-level by simply learning stuff it would be pretty tough.

Buy you don't do A-level and a degree at the same time in the same subject. One follows on from the other.

Seems like a cheat for people who want 3 A-levels but don't want to study 3 subjects.

[d000hg]

I've always reckoned that if you don't use it, your maths knowledge will drop back to at least one entire level of education below your highest level.

Me: degree in maths. Present level: can solve quadratic equations and perform simple differentiation.

Don't worry about the maths, there are other abilities that decay with age too.

You'll certainly forget specific techniques if you don't use them but that doesn't mean you've lost the ability - maths may be logical but it depends on axioms which you have to know in order to deduce things you might have forgotten.

I never understood how people managed to take Maths and Further Maths as two seperate A-levels. Presumably if you can do Further Maths, you can probably do Maths.

Couldn't you claim the same about A-level and a degree? Further maths builds considerably - if you came out of the main A-level with a solid grounding you wouldn't think it WAS any harder, but if you managed to get through the regular A-level by simply learning stuff it would be pretty tough.

[VectraMan]

Nothing like a good old debate about maths.

A maths debate, if you will. Excellent maths debating everyone.

Which reminds me of Alison Smith. Who sat next to me in my A-level maths exam whilst wearing the most revealing summer dress you can imagine. I knew looking up would mean an eye-full of 18 year old breastage, but I told myself that this could be the most important day of my life, there'd be pleanty of other days to look at breasts, and stayed fixated on the exam.

The mistakes we make when we're young.

[Sysman]

xkcd: Students

Fun Fact: decades from now, with schools a distant memory, you'll still be having this dream

This is true.

Not quite that dream, but I did have one where I couldn't remember which lectures were when.

Or which lectures were where, too.