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DanArmak comments on Rationality Quotes April 2012 - Less Wrong
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Have you ever tried to teach math to anyone who is not good at math? In my youth I once tutored a woman who was poor, but motivated enough to pay $40/session. A major obstacle was teaching her how to calculate (a^b)^c and getting her to reliably notice that minus times minus equals plus. Despite my attempts at creative physical demonstrations of the notion of a balanced scale, I couldn't get her to really understand the notion of doing the same things to both sides of a mathematical equation. I don't think she would ever understand what was going on in matrix calculus, period, barring "teaching methods" that involve neural reprogramming or gain of additional hardware.
This anecdote gives very little information on its own. Can you describe your experience teaching math to other people - the audience, the investment, the methods, the outcome? Do you have any idea whether that one woman eventually succeeded in learning some of what you couldn't teach her, and if so, how?
(ETA: I do agree with the general argument about people who are not good at math. I'm only saying this particular story doesn't tell us much about that particular woman, because we don't know how good you are at teaching, etc.)