(no subject)

ursula has written an interesting article for the magazine Math Horizons (linked here) about math, climbing, and learning strategies.

I’d learned I was a failure in gym class, but lots of kids decide they’re a failure in math class. When you’re a mathematician, everyone you meet tells you either, “I hate math,” or, “I was good at math until ____” (until middle school, until algebra, until geometry, until calculus or linear algebra or proofs). In officehours and during group work sessions, I discovered my math students—my smart, motivated, university students—were creating the same sorts of error logs I’d made in fencing class.
My female students seemed particularly distracted by negative mental cataloguing. Psychologists studying “stereotype threat” have shown that simply asking students to think about their gender can cause women to score worse on math tests; all that attention to failure makes it hard to concentrate.

The article resonates with me... I like math, love climbing, and high school PE was the bane of my existence. (seriously, so much hate)