Is it possible you have a mental disorder or anything of that nature getting in your way? I ask because this sounds a lot like my own experiences with math classes. (I have a visual/spatial problem rather than a math problem, but having a brain that's bad at figuring out how the positions of things relate to other things makes it harder to read math problems without getting confused.)
Depending on what you want to program, it's also possible to get pretty far without a lot of math training. (Although a traditional computer science program probably would require math and physics classes.) This... might be a less thorough route, but it looks like someone can go pretty far as a developer without learning math other than what they pick up in the course of programming. (This coming from a junior undergrad programmer with two internships. So I'm not a very reliable source here. But from what I've done so far, the only things from math classes that I've found myself using for work and class projects are really basic discrete math, mostly formal logic and base 2 numbers.)
My math teacher in Hs thought I may be dyslexic, I tend to think of problems backwards and to solve 4-1 by computing 3+1, for example. I do have some trouble with directions, but nothing too debilitating.
Hi everyone,
I am graduating as a philosophy student shortly, and want to pursue computer science / programming/ something-of-that-sort.
I am currently taking some basic math (calculus) and physics (mechanics) courses in order to obtain pre-requesits, and to develop a basic framework. My problem is that I can grasp concepts and ideas, but when it comes to solving specific problems with actual numbers, I seem to shut down. Specifically, it takes me much more time (read "hours") to solve problems that ought to take 10 minutes. This is a particularly bad thing on tests and exams.
I believe that the difficulty I am having stems from so little exposure to symbolic reasoning in the past 5-6 years. I am looking for resources, techniques and advice to "turbocharge" (to use CFAR terminology) my ability to absorb and deeply comprehend technical material, so that solving problems becomes second nature.
Thank you so much for your time,
Jeremy