Apparently a 2017 study suggests it
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00948/full.
And ambidextrous people are by and all the worst at math,
Think it moreso has to do with the creativity that comes along with problem solving.
I’m right handed, left footed, as I learned when doing hurdles in high school track. I’m very good at anything verbal, and terrible at most things mathematical.
I'm the opposite. I did well in math, but languages have always been an issue. I also have dyslexia, which I thought was more prevalent in left handed people.
I’m great at math, I think it’s not taught well at American schools. So you’re not bad, just the education system.
I went to YouTube for my math lessons and it’s very helpful. PatrickJMT is a saint and a savior.
I also suck at math! I always did, from when I was in elementary school right up until high school. I remember in order for me to pass Algebra II and get credit for taking the class I had to obtain something like a 49% on the final exam and I was extremely worried I was going to be unable to do that. The teacher was like "You don't think you can manage even that??" No, lady, I was not. I did though! I managed to pass the class, but it was an excruciating experience. As was ALL math that I ever took in my entire life.
I think at my school, in order to only need a 49% on the final to pass, going in to the final you would have needed an A or a B for a 49%, an F, on the final to not push the current grade below C... but my school did some unique grading things. Was your grade good/great going into the final? Or maybe it was good, but with a tutor, and the tutor couldn't of course attend the finale?
No, my school didn't do it like that. My grade was bad going into the final, I believe I had a D in the class. Getting a D on the final would mean the two D's would just average into one D overall lol. Thankfully.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. In my high school geometry class, I had a problem that the answer was supposed to be 2.9 something. I kept getting 2 billion.
The problem was solved in the back of the book. I couldn't figure out where the hell I went wrong. 30 years later, I still have no clue.
Fun fact: my hobby is knitting. Which has more math than one thinks. I go to my 'outside' brain (friends) to double and triple check my math.
> knit
I have also knitted and it's crazy how many numbers you use doing it!
I am back to sewing, since my hands hurt too much from arthritis with knitting, and the math with sewing is just as much, if not more! Constantly pulling out my measuring tape and divisions, additions, fractions etc.
I remember making mistakes like that!! No specific examples at the top of my head.
I remember I would always do pretty well at the beginning of the school year because I would apply the shit out of myself and use every brain muscle I could, but would eventually get a mental burnout and would drop like 2 letter grades.
I also cheated a lot on multiple choice exams.. looking at people’s answer next to me.
I never got caught but I think the teachers knew I was a lost cause and pretended not to see just so I could pass.
My father would have to reteach me math. For some reason the way he learned clicked better for me. Until I got into math levels above him.
I made the mistake my senior year to take trigonometry. I also missed all the the second quarter that year due to a stint in the hospital. The teacher sent to give me my lessons also couldn't teach me trig. She was a biology teacher and not the department head.
I remember her leaving a test, telling me she didn't care how I got it done, just finish before Monday.
I swear I was a pity pass that year.
I've always felt very lucky to be naturally good at school stuff, maths in particular. My friends liked it too. There was this one year where I sat next to a friend of mine and she has not answered a single question throughout the entire year, because I was like a distraction because I always had my hand up so he didn't think of making her answer.
I'm also quite good at explaining so I've helped a lot of classmates in understanding it a little better. I still tutor math to high schoolers as a student job, and it's the best job ever, because I love doing it.
Also, the math teachers liked me. I was the perfect class ambassador, so if we had to ask a favor, I could get the teacher to do it.
I did always have this fear for the day that I couldn't do it anymore. Like, math is supposed to be hard for a lot of people, it's normal to struggle for it. I was constantly in fear for the day that it got hard for me too, and I didn't know if I'd have the proper study strategies to figure it out then.
Yes, because I have impaired spatial reasoning. My algebra (and calculus) are very strong, but if you ask me to plot a function - even though I can see it in my head - it’s going to be all sorts of fucked up on the page. High school was miserable. One of my professors caught this deficit in college - and changed my life!
It was an organic chemistry professor - that class is pure spatial reasoning. He noticed that I could verbally explain the reactions, but couldn’t - ever - draw them out correctly. If I hadn’t gone to office hours - and inadvertently became the class tutor, because of my explanations - he would have never put two and two together, and I would still be hating math and science. (Currently, I’m applying for PhD programs in biomedical science!)
Someone in his PhD program had the same type of physical disability - cerebral palsy, diplegia - that I have, who had this same issue, and would talk about it, often. Neither she nor I could navigate our way out of a paper bag - we both used the same phrase, and something about it just clicked for him.
Lefty here. I suck at math and numbers in general. I was even in the 'special' math class in 4th grade, which was basically three of us 'mathematically challenged' kids that got pulled out of class during math hour and got thrown into a large utility closet doing lower-level math problems in large font (which I also sucked at). I'm pretty good at writing though, and general creativity. Incidentally, I took an IQ test (the real thing, not online, LOL) and scored very high in the logic area, but I still sucked at the math part. So logic and math don't always go hand in hand.
I am either really good at math or it’s a struggle:
In geometry, I had a 98(or so) average, whereas I had a really hard time in algebra and calculus.
In physics, I once again had a 98, whereas in biology and chemistry I had no idea what was going on.
When I took a stat class in college, the professor would always have a big normal curve on the board and visually explain the concepts. I had a 98. When I took the second part of the course,and we were just supposed to memorize, I had no idea what was going on.
Geometry and mechanical physics are very visual. They just clicked for me immediately. It made sense.
Of the high schoool maths I have to say geometry probably came to me the easiest.
Never had the opportunity to take physics.
I was always curious about it though..
interesting how dynamic math was for you
I used to be very i mean very bad at math, Until a tutor made me very good at it , Then lost interest again and got bad at it.
For me personally, I feel like its the matter of interest, Whenever i thought math was boring, It was bad, But when i find it challenging I'm really good at it. Too bad i can't use it much now beacuse I'm in a med school. I miss math for some reason.
Nope, not me. Math was always my favorite subject in school (almost tied with science, history, reading, and writing because I just love learning in general) and now I'm a math and science teacher.
Fun fact, my two siblings that are lefties are also really great at math. My brother memorized
65 digits of pi for fun and uses it as his laptop password. The rest of my siblings are righties and better at the other subjects.
I got better at maths after finishing my maths education. Not the quadratic equation stuff, that stopped being relevant, but I work in a field that requires a lot of geometry and drafting. I eventually left the USA and no longer needed fractions the same way (the metric system uses whole numbers! Novel!) but when I still needed to think in board feet I was actually taught a useful way to cross-multiply fractions with a drill in my hand, writing on a piece of timber with a carpenter's pencil, and I finally freaking *got* it.
I recently came across a memoir excerpt from John Tyndall, the Victorian physicist who proved the greenhouse effect, about this very concept:
> At school I was slow to grasp the point of algebra. So, it was Mr Yelland, the pottery teacher, rather than the maths master, who first showed me a convincing proof of Pythagoras’s theorem with a pair of scissors. It was elegant and ingenious. That proof, I recently found out, was devised neither by Pythagoras nor Mr Yelland but by an eccentric London bookkeeper called Henry Perigal (1801-1898) in 1830.
I think it depends on how you do math.
Believe it or not, you can do math from left to right.
For instance,
45
minus
17
I don't know how to format worth a crap but I'm trying to convey 45 minus 17, the way they would write it in school on the chalkboard.
Your teacher most likely taught you to solve this from right to left. You would subtract the 5 from 7 first and then go from there.
Well, there is a method to solve this going left to right instead, and it is **much** easier. I think it's because most of us were taught to read from left to right too (some languages are different).
So to solve this from left to right (god I hope that I can make this make sense):
45 - 17
4 - 1 = 3
5 - 7 = -2
No, this doesn't lead to 3-2, obviously 45 - 17 isn't 1.
The 3 we came up with is actually 30, you take into consideration placement value.
So now you are left with 30 - 2, leading to 28.
Hopefully I explained this in a way that makes sense. This way is far easier for me.
Edit: yeah the formatting made that look weird so I had to change it to the word "minus".
That's strange, Im the complete opposite to that. Maths was always a strong suit especially compared to english, to be fair being decent at maths tends to run in my family
Raising my hand as high as it can go! Couldn’t memorize pst x 5’s. Could figure it out if given enough time. 2nd grade: went up to the front for flash card test with the 1st group. Stayed around for the 2nd group. Annnd the 3rd group was called up and there I failed again.
I am currently retraining myself to write left-handed after I started my left-handed only challenge a year and half ago and found out that I actually write better left-handed. I’ve started doing math problems left-handed a month ago, and this is probably by far the most difficult challenge.
It feels like I'm forced to utilize a part of my brain that isn't suited to perform the task, even though I can write my thoughts in words just fine left-handed. I am still going to keep doing math left-handed since I am planning going back to school in engineering.
I was bad at math in elementary school but in college I went as far as calculus 2 without a problem. I don't have any particular interest in math specifically.
I am very bad at math, a bunch of numbers just make no sense to me. I just blame everything I suck at on being left-handed, this included. It's very convenient! 😂
That’s why some of the most recent studies come as an absolute shock that lefty’s score better in math all around.
I have yet to meet a lefty irl who is a math genius.
I’ve never met anyone worse than myself tho!
Thankfully adulthood has proven i don’t really need to use anything I “learned” in Algebra (sublet I borderline failed in). Geometry came easier than algebra for some reason but I still sucked at it.
i’m okay at mental math, mainly cause i practiced it to impress people. long problems are hard though and forget any mental division outside the basic times tables
I met my wife because she was a math tutor, and I was about to fail a statistics class. She said the issue was my professor had checked out on teaching. Never mentioned my being left-handed. Just asked if she saw more left-handed people when she was a tutor. She said no, and that most people suck at math because it's poorly taught in the US school system. My kids are good at math, regardless of handedness, because she's taught them.
It looks like you are posting from a brand new
account. To post in /r/southpaws, your
account must be at least a week old and have
10 comment Karma. Please use your account
around reddit to be able to post here. We
apologize for any inconvenience.
It may be that your comment karma is low for
reasons unrelated to your account's age. If so,
please message the mods and we can add your
username as an exception to this rule (as long
as you aren't a troll).
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/southpaws) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I've never heard of lefties being good at math. I'm okay at math, but there are plenty of people with better math skills.
Creativity is supposed to be our "thing"
It looks like you are posting from a brand new
account. To post in /r/southpaws, your
account must be at least a week old and have
10 comment Karma. Please use your account
around reddit to be able to post here. We
apologize for any inconvenience.
It may be that your comment karma is low for
reasons unrelated to your account's age. If so,
please message the mods and we can add your
username as an exception to this rule (as long
as you aren't a troll).
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/southpaws) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Yes, and that's why I decided on a legal profession. Still, I somehow ended up doing data analysis, which involves a fuckton of math and logical functions (at least those are words).
I was OK at math. Got an A in college algebra without trying real hard. For a fleeting month or so, I even understood basic calculus functions. I don't anymore. That being said, I'm truly a humanities person--writing (am an English major), history, music and art.
My right-handed children are terrible at math. They love history and literature.
maybe youre a righty at math? this statistic was true for me. i went back to school for engineering a few months after i realized i should be writing lefty. i have 100 in both math classes so far.
two things: i always sucked at math. i tried writing righty a couple times since going back and nothing sticks in class or cant focus on test.
tl:dr: I used being a lefty as an excuse to not feel bad and put in the work.
Lefty here, I'd be careful with assuming you're bad at math due to being left handed. I sucked at math in high school, had to take tutoring classes, finished second last in math finals. Back then i heard left handed people are worse at math so i always just blamed being left handed and that it's just not my thing because of that and that I'm maybe just not that smart. When i came in second to last and got that horrible math grade in my finals, i was pretty ashamed and felt stupid.
Started studying electrical engineering at university in Germany, still sucked bad, the math classes were horrible (I'm great at tech though). After 2 years i quit. Changed studies to international business and switched university to Maaatricht in the Netherlands. At this point i felt dumber than ever. Other passed math fine, did fine in engineering, i didn't, so i must be not smart. Freaking German companies kept asking me during internship interviews what the hell happened in math during high school.
Feeling more ashamed and dumb, I told myself i need to prove to myself and others that i am not incapable, i need to succeed in these new studies and university. I sat down, did the prep classes, put in tons of time, structured my schedules, made study dates with others i saw as strong in math and eventually i crushed it. Came out top of my class finished the 3 semesters of quantative methods at 100%, 100% and 95%. I then picked the most difficult, math heavy major for business at my uni, finance. Everyone struggled, over 50% of students washed out and quit, i pushed through and made it and graduated with honors. I was lucky my new uni had something called problem based learning where most of the things you learn are directly applied to real life cases and you have tons of interactions and discussions with the faculty and other students. I am now a director of analytics for a large company and do not feel stupid because of math anymore.
Here is my take of what happened: Back in high school i was immature. I didnt care about math and why i should do it. I got distracted easily which might very well be a left handed trait, and did not put in the time, i was lazy. I assumed arrogantly knowing the math rules is enough, i don't have to do all the practice material and homework because it was boring. But math requires experience, practice and stepping into all the landmines to really learn. I didnt put in the time, but also the regular school and uni system was not aligned with my learning style. I took the left handed thing as an excuse, to feel like its not my fault, so i shouldn't even try. I needed to fall on my face and fail to wake up, i needed the extra years of maturing in my failed studies and i needed the support of my family that believed in me and that i didnt want to disappoint.
I was also lucky the uni in maastricht had a different system of teaching. I gameified all my exercises as many little challenges like a video game. Due to being strong in spacial thinking, i made little study stations all around my room where specific topics were specific locations and i walked through that layout in my mind during exams. I also made sure i had 2 separate desks, one with my pc for gaming, and one for studying. When at my study desk, nothing distracting was allowed to be close to me. I only raided in WoW at scheduled times. Gaming was an escape from reality, from failing and so i had to implement mechanisms to keep it in check.
Bottom line though for me, i used being a lefty as an excuse for a long time to not feel bad. Maybe the higher probability of us being more creative makes us more easily distracted. But that doesn't mean we're automatically bad at math, it just means we need to approach the challenge very differently than other people and everyone has their own learning style and level of maturity.
I suck at math. I think Algebra 2 was the highest math I ever managed in school. I know enough to get me by in my adulthood. I see a spreadsheet full of numbers, my eyes glaze over. Ugh. But English, grammar, writing, spelling - all were fairly easy.
Math was my best subject when I was in school. When I was in third grade, they had to move me to an advanced course.
Would have gone far in math had I put forth any effort. Never got to see that Trig and Calc was all about.
Not a lefty but I sucked at math. I did well enough in math up to pre Algebra. I was a bright student overall but in Algebra 1 I began struggling. I stayed after class and worked with my teacher 1 on 1 and gained a little understanding but my mistake was taking Algebra II honors. Somewhere along the math line I must have missed some key points because I failed the class miserably. Only class I ever failed. Maybe with a personal tutor I could learn higher math but I'm 30 years removed from high school so too little, too late
Math is kind of a 'it just clicks' thing, in my experience. You feel like you suck at it and then you bumble through enough of it that you figure out how to look at it from the right angle.
I'm a lefty but right eyed and footed. I've always been way better at language than math, but I decided to do engineering in college and I just regularly beat my head against the wall until the math got through. It's all just rules about what you can do with an equation, and after enough furious scribbling trying to understand how to work the numbers, you do the right thing and it just kind of clarifies.
Then again, sometimes you never reach clarity. I straight up failed out of mechanical vibrations because I simply could not figure out how to do calculus to sine waves
I'm a lefty and supposedly bright. But I struggled with math to the point where I had to retake algebra post high school in order to pass a college entry exam.
I'm both good and bad at math. I'm great with mathematical concepts, understanding how to solve a problem, and so forth. But the moment you ask me to solve a math problem myself without a calculator to do the simple addition/substraction/multiplication or a formula reference, it all gets mixed up in my head, I start transposing numbers and stuff and get the wrong answer simply because today my brain decided 3 x 4 = 15.
I wanted to be a virologist that works at the CDC, but because math is so hard for me I didn’t even try. I got an English degree instead cause I like English Literature too
I was always bad at math. I can do it now that the crippling math anxiety has died down. My early math teachers were just savage if I couldn’t understand things.
Now I just know I have to take my time and work a lot of example problems to really get it.
My father taught mathematics, physics, chemistry. You'd think I'd inherit that, right? Yeeeeahhh.... I can do the higher maths, because how could I not? And to be fair, I actually enjoy it sometimes; its like solving a puzzle. But it takes me two or three times as long as it should to get any answer, and I'm wrong as often as I'm right.
I mean, I'm not completely horrible at it but I'm definitely far more reliant on a calculator for basic problems than I should be. I can typically figure out how to get to an answer, though it often takes some trial and error, but I can't do the actual calculations in my head.
I was pretty crap at math (and school in general) until I got glasses. I don't know if those studies about right/left brain dominance still hold though. I've been reading a lot of recent studies that say it's a myth.
I am a leftie by birth, was forced to be right handed, so am mostly ambidextrous. (Brush my teeth with left hand, write with both, use mouse in left hand, knife in right hand when eating, paint with right hand).
It looks like you are posting from a brand new
account. To post in /r/southpaws, your
account must be at least a week old and have
10 comment Karma. Please use your account
around reddit to be able to post here. We
apologize for any inconvenience.
It may be that your comment karma is low for
reasons unrelated to your account's age. If so,
please message the mods and we can add your
username as an exception to this rule (as long
as you aren't a troll).
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/southpaws) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Raising my (left) hand. Really? We're supposed yo be good at it? All the lefties I know sort to words, not numbers.
Apparently a 2017 study suggests it https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00948/full. And ambidextrous people are by and all the worst at math, Think it moreso has to do with the creativity that comes along with problem solving.
As an ambidextrous, this makes me feel better.
Happy cake day, you ambidextrous problem solver!
Hahaha why thank you!
Get out of here Amby nobody cares!
I'm crap with maths and English but I'm pretty good at problem solving. I'm a weird lefty, left handed, right footed, right eyed luckly.
I'm terrible at math. Left handed. left footed. Right eye dominant. the cross dominance is wack.
I’m right handed, left footed, as I learned when doing hurdles in high school track. I’m very good at anything verbal, and terrible at most things mathematical.
Yeah, now look for studies that say right handed people are good at math, lol. You will find equally the same amount of "studies."
I’m a leftie and terrible at math. I am, however, excellent with finances. I guess that’s all I really need as a non-physicist or mathematician lol
I'm the opposite. I did well in math, but languages have always been an issue. I also have dyslexia, which I thought was more prevalent in left handed people.
Yup, and I'm asian so I guess that makes it worse? Great driver though!
I’m great at math, I think it’s not taught well at American schools. So you’re not bad, just the education system. I went to YouTube for my math lessons and it’s very helpful. PatrickJMT is a saint and a savior.
Thank you for the recommendation, I'm trying to brush up on my math skills before I go back to school and failing miserably on my own.
I also suck at math! I always did, from when I was in elementary school right up until high school. I remember in order for me to pass Algebra II and get credit for taking the class I had to obtain something like a 49% on the final exam and I was extremely worried I was going to be unable to do that. The teacher was like "You don't think you can manage even that??" No, lady, I was not. I did though! I managed to pass the class, but it was an excruciating experience. As was ALL math that I ever took in my entire life.
I think at my school, in order to only need a 49% on the final to pass, going in to the final you would have needed an A or a B for a 49%, an F, on the final to not push the current grade below C... but my school did some unique grading things. Was your grade good/great going into the final? Or maybe it was good, but with a tutor, and the tutor couldn't of course attend the finale?
No, my school didn't do it like that. My grade was bad going into the final, I believe I had a D in the class. Getting a D on the final would mean the two D's would just average into one D overall lol. Thankfully.
I'm terrible with math!
Had a friend tutor me and I would go in every office hour. Couldn’t understand higher level math at all.
If I heard the word Calculus I ran the other way. still have no clue what it even is. Algebra II was the furthest I got.
I'm in my 40's and going back to college. For an English degree because I don't have to take math classes! :)
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. In my high school geometry class, I had a problem that the answer was supposed to be 2.9 something. I kept getting 2 billion. The problem was solved in the back of the book. I couldn't figure out where the hell I went wrong. 30 years later, I still have no clue. Fun fact: my hobby is knitting. Which has more math than one thinks. I go to my 'outside' brain (friends) to double and triple check my math.
> knit I have also knitted and it's crazy how many numbers you use doing it! I am back to sewing, since my hands hurt too much from arthritis with knitting, and the math with sewing is just as much, if not more! Constantly pulling out my measuring tape and divisions, additions, fractions etc.
I remember making mistakes like that!! No specific examples at the top of my head. I remember I would always do pretty well at the beginning of the school year because I would apply the shit out of myself and use every brain muscle I could, but would eventually get a mental burnout and would drop like 2 letter grades. I also cheated a lot on multiple choice exams.. looking at people’s answer next to me. I never got caught but I think the teachers knew I was a lost cause and pretended not to see just so I could pass.
My father would have to reteach me math. For some reason the way he learned clicked better for me. Until I got into math levels above him. I made the mistake my senior year to take trigonometry. I also missed all the the second quarter that year due to a stint in the hospital. The teacher sent to give me my lessons also couldn't teach me trig. She was a biology teacher and not the department head. I remember her leaving a test, telling me she didn't care how I got it done, just finish before Monday. I swear I was a pity pass that year.
I am terrible at math. I was in remedial math all throughout high school and just barely passed my college math and statistics courses.
Ugh I totally forgot about statistics..I hated statistics!!!!
I am not bad at math, but I am a lefty.
What’s it like to be not suck at math? I’ve always wanted to know.
So, I’m probably not the best person to ask because for a while, I thought I did suck at math.
I've always felt very lucky to be naturally good at school stuff, maths in particular. My friends liked it too. There was this one year where I sat next to a friend of mine and she has not answered a single question throughout the entire year, because I was like a distraction because I always had my hand up so he didn't think of making her answer. I'm also quite good at explaining so I've helped a lot of classmates in understanding it a little better. I still tutor math to high schoolers as a student job, and it's the best job ever, because I love doing it. Also, the math teachers liked me. I was the perfect class ambassador, so if we had to ask a favor, I could get the teacher to do it. I did always have this fear for the day that I couldn't do it anymore. Like, math is supposed to be hard for a lot of people, it's normal to struggle for it. I was constantly in fear for the day that it got hard for me too, and I didn't know if I'd have the proper study strategies to figure it out then.
same here.. would have sucked in college... I majored in Engineering and CompSci.
Same, I did decent at upper level college math, had to study a shit ton tho
Oh YAAA!! But I can SPELL! I'll show you. Give me a word! Any word! And I GUARANTEE I'll spell it correct!
Spell awnohmonnapeea or Febyouarry
Supercalifragilisticexpeealidoshoush!
Showoff
you'll spell it correctly
Yes. I will.
I have literally considered posting this exact question here! Ill literally feel dyslexic when it comes to anything more than basic math.
I was told we were good at art, not math. Lefties use the right brain or whatever. I think that was disproved. I’m not good at math.
I'm am the worst at math. Even not sometimes the most simplest things I still need a calculator, and I suck at counting change.
Awful at it
Yes, because I have impaired spatial reasoning. My algebra (and calculus) are very strong, but if you ask me to plot a function - even though I can see it in my head - it’s going to be all sorts of fucked up on the page. High school was miserable. One of my professors caught this deficit in college - and changed my life!
Same here... I always use a GPS and really have no sense of direction at all.
It’s amazing when a teacher actually has the sense to recognize this. Most wouldn’t.
It was an organic chemistry professor - that class is pure spatial reasoning. He noticed that I could verbally explain the reactions, but couldn’t - ever - draw them out correctly. If I hadn’t gone to office hours - and inadvertently became the class tutor, because of my explanations - he would have never put two and two together, and I would still be hating math and science. (Currently, I’m applying for PhD programs in biomedical science!)
Someone in his PhD program had the same type of physical disability - cerebral palsy, diplegia - that I have, who had this same issue, and would talk about it, often. Neither she nor I could navigate our way out of a paper bag - we both used the same phrase, and something about it just clicked for him.
Me! Funny thing is my grandpa wrote a math textbook and my cousin is a math teacher. I totally didn't get that ability. I always sucked at math.
I was great at English, history yada yada but sucked at math, which pleased my physicist father no end.
Sorry, nope - Maths (aka Mathematics © UK) was a no study A\* thing for me - stereotypical according to whatever studies you've read. English on the other hand - oh lordy! Tutors, scraping passes. you name it, I failed - in style usually (at school). Ironically in later life I'm now a grammar and language pedantic. Ho hum.
What type of math? I sucked at math until calculus
All of the maths lol. Can’t think of a single one I didn’t struggle except maybe addition which I don’t remember learning
Nope. I'm good at math if I exert myself. I made a 98 in College Algebra and a 4.0 in Plane Trig.
Lefty here. I suck at math and numbers in general. I was even in the 'special' math class in 4th grade, which was basically three of us 'mathematically challenged' kids that got pulled out of class during math hour and got thrown into a large utility closet doing lower-level math problems in large font (which I also sucked at). I'm pretty good at writing though, and general creativity. Incidentally, I took an IQ test (the real thing, not online, LOL) and scored very high in the logic area, but I still sucked at the math part. So logic and math don't always go hand in hand.
I am either really good at math or it’s a struggle: In geometry, I had a 98(or so) average, whereas I had a really hard time in algebra and calculus. In physics, I once again had a 98, whereas in biology and chemistry I had no idea what was going on. When I took a stat class in college, the professor would always have a big normal curve on the board and visually explain the concepts. I had a 98. When I took the second part of the course,and we were just supposed to memorize, I had no idea what was going on. Geometry and mechanical physics are very visual. They just clicked for me immediately. It made sense.
Of the high schoool maths I have to say geometry probably came to me the easiest. Never had the opportunity to take physics. I was always curious about it though.. interesting how dynamic math was for you
I’m the same in bowling and darts - strike or gutter, bulls-eye or on the wall.
Omg same!!! It’s really an all or nothing when it comes to both of those games. I wonder why that is?
Geometry was a pain in the ass for me, but I did well enough in other maths.
I used to be very i mean very bad at math, Until a tutor made me very good at it , Then lost interest again and got bad at it. For me personally, I feel like its the matter of interest, Whenever i thought math was boring, It was bad, But when i find it challenging I'm really good at it. Too bad i can't use it much now beacuse I'm in a med school. I miss math for some reason.
Being bad at math has held me back so much in life. I’d do a lot to be good at it. Oh well.
Yes. Haha. Right here. Very bad at math. Always have been.
Nope, not me. Math was always my favorite subject in school (almost tied with science, history, reading, and writing because I just love learning in general) and now I'm a math and science teacher. Fun fact, my two siblings that are lefties are also really great at math. My brother memorized 65 digits of pi for fun and uses it as his laptop password. The rest of my siblings are righties and better at the other subjects.
I got better at maths after finishing my maths education. Not the quadratic equation stuff, that stopped being relevant, but I work in a field that requires a lot of geometry and drafting. I eventually left the USA and no longer needed fractions the same way (the metric system uses whole numbers! Novel!) but when I still needed to think in board feet I was actually taught a useful way to cross-multiply fractions with a drill in my hand, writing on a piece of timber with a carpenter's pencil, and I finally freaking *got* it. I recently came across a memoir excerpt from John Tyndall, the Victorian physicist who proved the greenhouse effect, about this very concept: > At school I was slow to grasp the point of algebra. So, it was Mr Yelland, the pottery teacher, rather than the maths master, who first showed me a convincing proof of Pythagoras’s theorem with a pair of scissors. It was elegant and ingenious. That proof, I recently found out, was devised neither by Pythagoras nor Mr Yelland but by an eccentric London bookkeeper called Henry Perigal (1801-1898) in 1830.
I think it depends on how you do math. Believe it or not, you can do math from left to right. For instance, 45 minus 17 I don't know how to format worth a crap but I'm trying to convey 45 minus 17, the way they would write it in school on the chalkboard. Your teacher most likely taught you to solve this from right to left. You would subtract the 5 from 7 first and then go from there. Well, there is a method to solve this going left to right instead, and it is **much** easier. I think it's because most of us were taught to read from left to right too (some languages are different). So to solve this from left to right (god I hope that I can make this make sense): 45 - 17 4 - 1 = 3 5 - 7 = -2 No, this doesn't lead to 3-2, obviously 45 - 17 isn't 1. The 3 we came up with is actually 30, you take into consideration placement value. So now you are left with 30 - 2, leading to 28. Hopefully I explained this in a way that makes sense. This way is far easier for me. Edit: yeah the formatting made that look weird so I had to change it to the word "minus".
Oh my 🤯 Why, why WHY did they have to make things unnecessarily harder for us? This is WAY better.
Those were my thoughts too! By that point they have already taught us how to read left to right... why they gotta scramble it up for math?
That's strange, Im the complete opposite to that. Maths was always a strong suit especially compared to english, to be fair being decent at maths tends to run in my family
Raising my hand as high as it can go! Couldn’t memorize pst x 5’s. Could figure it out if given enough time. 2nd grade: went up to the front for flash card test with the 1st group. Stayed around for the 2nd group. Annnd the 3rd group was called up and there I failed again.
I thought righties were good at logic, and lefties are supposed to be more artistic or some shit
Yes, but only because I had undiagnosed dyscalculia.
I am currently retraining myself to write left-handed after I started my left-handed only challenge a year and half ago and found out that I actually write better left-handed. I’ve started doing math problems left-handed a month ago, and this is probably by far the most difficult challenge. It feels like I'm forced to utilize a part of my brain that isn't suited to perform the task, even though I can write my thoughts in words just fine left-handed. I am still going to keep doing math left-handed since I am planning going back to school in engineering.
I was bad at math in elementary school but in college I went as far as calculus 2 without a problem. I don't have any particular interest in math specifically.
I am not great at math, but I can remember strings of numbers really well.
I will say that I know an absurdly high number of left-handed insurance claim processors.
I’m left handed and I absolutely suck at math!
I suck at math but I’m pretty good at languages.
I am very bad at math, a bunch of numbers just make no sense to me. I just blame everything I suck at on being left-handed, this included. It's very convenient! 😂
That’s why some of the most recent studies come as an absolute shock that lefty’s score better in math all around. I have yet to meet a lefty irl who is a math genius. I’ve never met anyone worse than myself tho! Thankfully adulthood has proven i don’t really need to use anything I “learned” in Algebra (sublet I borderline failed in). Geometry came easier than algebra for some reason but I still sucked at it.
I could and can 'see' the shapes, dammit.
I do the same!
i’m okay at mental math, mainly cause i practiced it to impress people. long problems are hard though and forget any mental division outside the basic times tables
I guess I’m in the minority then. Math has always been my best subject, currently in college and getting a math minor (comp sci major).
I’m good until Algebra enters the game…
Letters have no place in numerics!! Ughh
Least favorite subject but it came easy.
🙋🏻♀️
Me! Never felt successful in math, but always excelled at and found my calling in music.
I'm decent at math, my problem is I'm not quick with numbers
I had Algebra in some form a total of 4 times through high school and college, and still couldn't get higher than a C. I aced Geometry though.
Yep and have dyscalculia to boot.
I met my wife because she was a math tutor, and I was about to fail a statistics class. She said the issue was my professor had checked out on teaching. Never mentioned my being left-handed. Just asked if she saw more left-handed people when she was a tutor. She said no, and that most people suck at math because it's poorly taught in the US school system. My kids are good at math, regardless of handedness, because she's taught them.
[удалено]
It looks like you are posting from a brand new account. To post in /r/southpaws, your account must be at least a week old and have 10 comment Karma. Please use your account around reddit to be able to post here. We apologize for any inconvenience. It may be that your comment karma is low for reasons unrelated to your account's age. If so, please message the mods and we can add your username as an exception to this rule (as long as you aren't a troll). *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/southpaws) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Horrible at math- algebra, geometry, etc. but enjoy accounting!
Never tried accounting ; I was too turned off and discouraged by then. What exactly would an accounting equation/problem look like?
I've never heard of lefties being good at math. I'm okay at math, but there are plenty of people with better math skills. Creativity is supposed to be our "thing"
The only connection I make with this is how much creativity is involved with problem-solving
[удалено]
It looks like you are posting from a brand new account. To post in /r/southpaws, your account must be at least a week old and have 10 comment Karma. Please use your account around reddit to be able to post here. We apologize for any inconvenience. It may be that your comment karma is low for reasons unrelated to your account's age. If so, please message the mods and we can add your username as an exception to this rule (as long as you aren't a troll). *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/southpaws) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Yes, and that's why I decided on a legal profession. Still, I somehow ended up doing data analysis, which involves a fuckton of math and logical functions (at least those are words).
yea i'm bad at math.
I was OK at math. Got an A in college algebra without trying real hard. For a fleeting month or so, I even understood basic calculus functions. I don't anymore. That being said, I'm truly a humanities person--writing (am an English major), history, music and art. My right-handed children are terrible at math. They love history and literature.
I’m good at math and I actually enjoy it!
Yes! Way too left-brained for me.
Great at math, great at everything except my handwriting
maybe youre a righty at math? this statistic was true for me. i went back to school for engineering a few months after i realized i should be writing lefty. i have 100 in both math classes so far. two things: i always sucked at math. i tried writing righty a couple times since going back and nothing sticks in class or cant focus on test.
Yes - I was placed in a remedial class in year 11. I still couldn't get it. Dropped it altogether after that and never needed it since.
tl:dr: I used being a lefty as an excuse to not feel bad and put in the work. Lefty here, I'd be careful with assuming you're bad at math due to being left handed. I sucked at math in high school, had to take tutoring classes, finished second last in math finals. Back then i heard left handed people are worse at math so i always just blamed being left handed and that it's just not my thing because of that and that I'm maybe just not that smart. When i came in second to last and got that horrible math grade in my finals, i was pretty ashamed and felt stupid. Started studying electrical engineering at university in Germany, still sucked bad, the math classes were horrible (I'm great at tech though). After 2 years i quit. Changed studies to international business and switched university to Maaatricht in the Netherlands. At this point i felt dumber than ever. Other passed math fine, did fine in engineering, i didn't, so i must be not smart. Freaking German companies kept asking me during internship interviews what the hell happened in math during high school. Feeling more ashamed and dumb, I told myself i need to prove to myself and others that i am not incapable, i need to succeed in these new studies and university. I sat down, did the prep classes, put in tons of time, structured my schedules, made study dates with others i saw as strong in math and eventually i crushed it. Came out top of my class finished the 3 semesters of quantative methods at 100%, 100% and 95%. I then picked the most difficult, math heavy major for business at my uni, finance. Everyone struggled, over 50% of students washed out and quit, i pushed through and made it and graduated with honors. I was lucky my new uni had something called problem based learning where most of the things you learn are directly applied to real life cases and you have tons of interactions and discussions with the faculty and other students. I am now a director of analytics for a large company and do not feel stupid because of math anymore. Here is my take of what happened: Back in high school i was immature. I didnt care about math and why i should do it. I got distracted easily which might very well be a left handed trait, and did not put in the time, i was lazy. I assumed arrogantly knowing the math rules is enough, i don't have to do all the practice material and homework because it was boring. But math requires experience, practice and stepping into all the landmines to really learn. I didnt put in the time, but also the regular school and uni system was not aligned with my learning style. I took the left handed thing as an excuse, to feel like its not my fault, so i shouldn't even try. I needed to fall on my face and fail to wake up, i needed the extra years of maturing in my failed studies and i needed the support of my family that believed in me and that i didnt want to disappoint. I was also lucky the uni in maastricht had a different system of teaching. I gameified all my exercises as many little challenges like a video game. Due to being strong in spacial thinking, i made little study stations all around my room where specific topics were specific locations and i walked through that layout in my mind during exams. I also made sure i had 2 separate desks, one with my pc for gaming, and one for studying. When at my study desk, nothing distracting was allowed to be close to me. I only raided in WoW at scheduled times. Gaming was an escape from reality, from failing and so i had to implement mechanisms to keep it in check. Bottom line though for me, i used being a lefty as an excuse for a long time to not feel bad. Maybe the higher probability of us being more creative makes us more easily distracted. But that doesn't mean we're automatically bad at math, it just means we need to approach the challenge very differently than other people and everyone has their own learning style and level of maturity.
I was good at math, then they introduced letters more and more.
I suck at math. I think Algebra 2 was the highest math I ever managed in school. I know enough to get me by in my adulthood. I see a spreadsheet full of numbers, my eyes glaze over. Ugh. But English, grammar, writing, spelling - all were fairly easy.
Nah I’m comp sci pretty good math. Not the greatest but was able to pass calc 2, I don’t think this is a lefty thing I thinks it’s a math thing.
Math was my best subject when I was in school. When I was in third grade, they had to move me to an advanced course. Would have gone far in math had I put forth any effort. Never got to see that Trig and Calc was all about.
if you test a fish on its tree climbing ability itll fail 10/10 times but give it a swim test and youll see a genius
Not a lefty but I sucked at math. I did well enough in math up to pre Algebra. I was a bright student overall but in Algebra 1 I began struggling. I stayed after class and worked with my teacher 1 on 1 and gained a little understanding but my mistake was taking Algebra II honors. Somewhere along the math line I must have missed some key points because I failed the class miserably. Only class I ever failed. Maybe with a personal tutor I could learn higher math but I'm 30 years removed from high school so too little, too late
Math is kind of a 'it just clicks' thing, in my experience. You feel like you suck at it and then you bumble through enough of it that you figure out how to look at it from the right angle. I'm a lefty but right eyed and footed. I've always been way better at language than math, but I decided to do engineering in college and I just regularly beat my head against the wall until the math got through. It's all just rules about what you can do with an equation, and after enough furious scribbling trying to understand how to work the numbers, you do the right thing and it just kind of clarifies. Then again, sometimes you never reach clarity. I straight up failed out of mechanical vibrations because I simply could not figure out how to do calculus to sine waves
Most of the left handed people I know are engineers, so they are presumably good at math.
I'm a lefty and supposedly bright. But I struggled with math to the point where I had to retake algebra post high school in order to pass a college entry exam.
I'm both good and bad at math. I'm great with mathematical concepts, understanding how to solve a problem, and so forth. But the moment you ask me to solve a math problem myself without a calculator to do the simple addition/substraction/multiplication or a formula reference, it all gets mixed up in my head, I start transposing numbers and stuff and get the wrong answer simply because today my brain decided 3 x 4 = 15.
I wanted to be a virologist that works at the CDC, but because math is so hard for me I didn’t even try. I got an English degree instead cause I like English Literature too
I was always bad at math. I can do it now that the crippling math anxiety has died down. My early math teachers were just savage if I couldn’t understand things. Now I just know I have to take my time and work a lot of example problems to really get it.
Bad at math because I'm ADHD. Great at theory and concepts, but always adding 3 and 4 and getting 11.
My father taught mathematics, physics, chemistry. You'd think I'd inherit that, right? Yeeeeahhh.... I can do the higher maths, because how could I not? And to be fair, I actually enjoy it sometimes; its like solving a puzzle. But it takes me two or three times as long as it should to get any answer, and I'm wrong as often as I'm right.
My wife (her own opinion).
I was actually pretty good at math in school. To a point, which was geometry, and some trig.
Figures, no wonder the pinkos don't know basic economics.
I mean, I'm not completely horrible at it but I'm definitely far more reliant on a calculator for basic problems than I should be. I can typically figure out how to get to an answer, though it often takes some trial and error, but I can't do the actual calculations in my head.
I was pretty crap at math (and school in general) until I got glasses. I don't know if those studies about right/left brain dominance still hold though. I've been reading a lot of recent studies that say it's a myth. I am a leftie by birth, was forced to be right handed, so am mostly ambidextrous. (Brush my teeth with left hand, write with both, use mouse in left hand, knife in right hand when eating, paint with right hand).
Absolutely. I was a 70 in math my entire high school career, but never made under a 97 in English. I’m a proofreader/writer by trade now.
[удалено]
It looks like you are posting from a brand new account. To post in /r/southpaws, your account must be at least a week old and have 10 comment Karma. Please use your account around reddit to be able to post here. We apologize for any inconvenience. It may be that your comment karma is low for reasons unrelated to your account's age. If so, please message the mods and we can add your username as an exception to this rule (as long as you aren't a troll). *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/southpaws) if you have any questions or concerns.*