This is how to overcome your fear of numbers
A Mind for Numbers
Author: Barbara Oakley is professor of engineering at Oakland University and a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. People elsewhere in the world have confronted their fear of mathematics and survived to tell a good story.
In the book A Mind For Numbers Barbara Oakley, a professor of engineering, uses her personal experiences, a journey from humanities – a language practitioner in the army – to show us how she conquered her fear of numbers to grow a healthy and successful love for mathematics and a change in her career.
She was goaded in this direction when she noticed that people with qualifications like hers were being overlooked in favour of those with mathematics in their background.
Although the book is about How To Excel At Maths and Science (even if you flunked algebra), the methods promoted in the book are equally valid for study of any other subject.
In one of its later chapters she actually argues that understanding maths helps you transfer its knowledge usefully to a variety of different other subjects.
She notes in this regard the ongoing debate about the value of abstract and discipline specific maths.
In other words, the book is essentially about learning how to learn and drawing lessons also from the latest knowledge coming out of neuroscience – the study of the brain.
Read the book if only to satisfy yourself whether the writer of the foreword to the book is correct when he says: “Your brain has amazing abilities, but it did not come with an instruction manual. You’ll find that manual in A Mind For Numbers. Whether you’re a novice or an expert, you will find great new ways to improve your skills and techniques for learning, especially related to maths and science.”
Her experiences are not the only ones she draws from. She interviews lots of other people, students, professionals who teach, lecture or are simply relating how they too used or use methods similar to or the same as the ones she eloquently describes.
The design of the book itself is an illustration of the methods she talks about and promotes.
She reminds you, as the reader, for instance, at the end of each chapter to close the book and recall from memory the main ideas of what you just read. She claims this to be the most reliable method of study ensuring ability to later recall.
Another example is how she splits discussion of a subject into two parts and discusses another in between to illustrate what she calls interleaving.
This is suggested as a way to provide relief to one part of the brain after focused attention that by switching this way you allow its other diffuse mode to take over and work out solutions while your attention is elsewhere.
Resting, taking a bath, swimming, exercising, checking your social media maybe – when done in between focused attentive study, as a reward, serves a useful purpose to allow the brain to make connections it needs to give creative solutions or answers or deepen understanding.
A central theme of the book, she reckons, is the paradoxical nature of learning. “Focused attention is indispensable for problem solving – yet it can also block our ability to solve problems. Persistence is key – but it can also leave us unnecessarily pounding our heads.
Memorisation is a critical aspect of acquiring expertise – but it can also keep us focused on trees instead of the forest.
Metaphor allows us to acquire new concepts – but it can also keep us wedded to faulty conceptions.
She warns against illusions of competence. And, this arises, she maintains, when we see a problem and its solution and assume that therefore we understand it.
The book, first published in 2014, has 18 brief chapters in 307 pages.