math and climbing

[ursula]

In November, my article on math anxiety and climbing came out in the magazine Math Horizons. It's about how I used what I know about teaching math to talk myself into climbing a wall. My first climbing partner, Megan, was on the magazine cover:

http://www.maa.org/mathhorizons/nov11.jpg

I've posted a proof of the article on my professional website:

http://people.uwec.edu/whitchua/notes/mathandgymclass-mathhorizons.pdf

Comments

[cathexys]

What a great article! And how very true about setting/creating our own limitations! I'm always amazed when I look at young kids who haven't been told yet that they can't sing/dance/run/... But I also think that a huge part of that is a system that has to measure everything and make it competitive. What a great analogy with the math self failure depictions. I usually tell folks like that that few people are bad at math but people had bad math teachers :)

[ursula]

And the cultural weight of expectations is heavy enough that you can have perfectly decent teachers and still end up stuck with distracting angst-- I remember quite liking my first elementary school gym teacher, for instance.

[wpadmirer]

That is a fabulous article! BRAVO! Would you mind if I put a link to it on my rock gym's Facebook? We're a university town, and many of our climbers are people studying math and physics. I know they would enjoy it.

[ursula]

Thank you! And by all means, do share.

[wpadmirer]

Cool! Will do that now!

[rydra_wong]

Thanks so much for posting this! I just wanted to say that I've linked to it here.

[indywind]

Here via rydra_wong.
This idea is relevant to my interests. Commensurate with the limitations one imposes on oneself by focusing on judgement, failure & insecurity, there are the limitations imposed by others - teachers, coaches, senior participants, who undermine or outright prevent participation--and thus growth-- by people who don't come to their first experiences already successful.
I don't climb (yet?), but I did take up yoga for a social "sport" (to complement my solitary running & cycling & weight training) where everyone is permitted an encouraged to engage at their own level without competition or judgment. the more I hear about climbing, the more it appeals.

[rydra_wong]

the more I hear about climbing, the more it appeals.

Be careful, we proselytize. *g*

If you've got any questions or there's anything you're curious/worried about, you'd be very welcome to ask here.

And the experiences: first time tag might be of interest.

I should add that climbing meshes with yoga very, very well; a lot of climbers do yoga.

[robynbender]

this is so useful! I will be using it with young psychotherapists. One of our big underlying themes is how people think achievements are possible only because of inborn TALENT -- which they have none of -- and are shocked to discover that SKILL can be learned and practiced. (First the therapists have to get that, then they can help their clients.) Brava!

[ursula]

Cool!

My little sister is doing a Ph.D. in counseling right now, actually-- we talk about this stuff a fair amount.

[surexit]

That was a lovely article! (Linked by rydra_wong.) It, uh, actually made me wish I could give maths another go. :D (Also climbing, but the maths thing was more surprising.)

[ursula]

This makes me happy! Thank you.

[surexit]

Maybe someday! I suffered from being very, very good at all academic endeavours except for maths, at which I was only (only for fuck's sake, my perceptions were so out of whack) at a high B or low A level. So I perceived myself as awful at it, and it all went bad from there.

Reading your article made me think about how harshly I was judging myself at maths. And how I've written off this whole discipline - it's one of the few things that when people say that's what they study, I normally don't ask for more details. So, yeah, awesome, thank you.

[ursula]

Hmm. I was lucky in that my academic subjects were a little bit more evenly matched-- I still had to work harder in math classes, but since I was bored to tears in a lot of my grade school courses, I saw this as a bonus.

I wonder if you would actually like some of the crazy philosophical math-major math more than the high school topics? Things about logic and infinity and extra dimensions and the axiom of choice?

[surexit]

Yes, I think so, but first I would have to wrap my brain around the idea that there is more to maths than the obvious 2+2. I DON'T GET IT. HOW CAN THERE BE ENOUGH NUMBERS IN THE WORLD TO DO A THREE-YEAR DEGREE ON THEM?

Basically I find maths v v hard to conceptualise. But next time I talk to a mathy friend, I'm going to ask them about maths. Yay!

[ursula]

I DON'T KNOW, ASK A STATISTICIAN. (I <3 geometry.)

Yay!

[aquaeri]

I am rather a fan of maths, so I'll shut up and go away if it's not helpful, but maths isn't really about numbers, maths is about patterns, and numbers are a type of pattern, and if you get that, you're in :-).

(2+2 is the pattern where two apples and two more apples is "the same" as two cars and two more cars.)

[surexit]

Yeah, that's the thing, I get that sort of, but not intuitively, you know? Like (2+2 is the pattern where two apples and two more apples is "the same" as two cars and two more cars.) sort of confuses me but I half get it and the bit I get of it sort of blows my mind because it's so mundane but so different from how I think of numbers.

BASICALLY, I am missing the maths part of my brain.