Page 225 - A Mind For Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

afterword

y eighth-grade math and science teacher had a powerful impact on my
M life. He plucked me from the back of the class and motivated me to strive
for excellence. I repaid him in high school by getting a D in geometry—twice. I
just couldn’t get the material on my own, and I didn’t have the luxury of a great
teacher to prod me in the ways I needed. Eventually, in college, I figured it out.
But it was a frustrating journey. I wish I’d had a book like this back then.
Flash forward a decade and a half. My daughter turned math homework into

a form of torture Dante would be too shy to write about. She would hit a wall
and then hit it again and again. When she finally finished crying, she would
circle around and eventually figure it out. But I could never get her to just back
off and regroup without the drama. I let her read this book. The first thing she
said was, “I wish I’d had this book when I was in school!”
There has long been a stream of potentially productive study advice coming

from scientists. Unfortunately, it has seldom been translated so the average
student can easily grasp and use it. Not every scientist has a knack for
translation, and not every writer has a firm grasp of the science. In this book,
Barbara Oakley threaded this needle beautifully. Her use of vivid examples and
explanations of the strategies reveals not only how useful but how credible these
ideas are. When I asked my daughter why she liked the advice in the book, even
though I had mentioned several of the techniques to her when she was in middle

school, she said, “She tells you why and it makes sense.” Another hit to my
parental ego!
Now that you have read this book, you have been exposed to some simple
yet potentially powerful strategies—strategies, by the way, that could benefit you
in more than just math and science. As you’ve discovered, these strategies grew

from considerable evidence about how the human mind works. The interplay
between emotion and cognition, though seldom put into words, is an essential
component to all learning. In her own way, my daughter pointed out that
studying isn’t just about the strategies. You have to be convinced that those
strategies can actually work. The clear and compelling evidence you read in this