• Question: When you were at school did you find maths easy?

    Asked by dior101 to Christine, Edd, Jess, Nicolas, Zara on 13 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Edward Codling

      Edward Codling answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      I guess I was lucky in that I always enjoyed maths and found it my best subject at school. I still had to work hard at it though to make sure I understood everything. However, I enjoyed the fact that all the answers could be find using a standard method or formula – if you could do one example and understood it you could do any similar example. I didn’t actually like biology that much at school because the answers were much less exact and a bit more ‘fuzzy’!

      What about you? Do you enjoy maths? Do you find it easy?

      What I enjoy about Maths the most was spotting the patterns in the numbers that I am looking at. This is very similar to what I do now – I observe animal behaviour in nature and try and spot patterns in what is observed. Sometimes I use maths to help analyse data so that I can perhaps find out things that I wouldn’t have spotted otherwise.

      If you are interested in science (or any technical job) then Maths is a great subject to have. If you do well at maths at school then you’ll be in a great position later on in life – so keep going with it!

    • Photo: Zara Gladman

      Zara Gladman answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      No, I found it really difficult and it was my least favourite subject (sorry Edd!). I managed to get a B for my exam but had to study pretty hard in order to understand it.

      These days, I use a kind of maths called statistics to help understand patterns in my results. It’s quite different from the maths I learned in school – I like it a lot better! 8)

    • Photo: Nicolas Biber

      Nicolas Biber answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      Maths was one of my favorite subjectes in school, but by far not always easy. The funny thing with maths is that some things come to you really easily while other people really struggle, then other things are really hard for you, and other people find them quite easy. In that way maths is a great way to find out how your brain works, and that’s pretty exciting 🙂 When I have a really difficult maths problem I still like to see it as a challenge, and solving it is just such a great feeling!
      Oh and I have to agree with Zara. We need statistics a lot, and because we really need it, it makes it also easier to understand. Don’t you sometimes struggle understanding maths because you just don’t see a point to it?

    • Photo: Jessica Chu

      Jessica Chu answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      big no for me!
      I have always found maths quite hard and challenging but it didn’t stop me choosing it for my A Levels because it was so rewarding being able to solve some hard equations or work out the calculations and get them correct (usally with the help of my brainy friend that I sat next to) 😉

      Usually, after using all my thinking power – I feel like I can reward myself with a big chocolate bar!!

      Glad I did it because I pretty much use maths every day.. in the lab…. shopping … everythinng?!

Comments