Blog 2-Abstraction vs. Concrete

Jean Piaget’s quote tells me that abstraction really is to trick your mind; setting it up. I can relate to this as I am not good with just having to know something. I have to see the process in how it works in order to remember it. Math has always been hard for me because of this. Memorizing formula’s is a struggle for me. Having a process makes it stick better. It has been over 20 years since graduating high school and I never did well in math then. When it came time for college math classes, 18-19 years later, I had a hard time. Giving concrete would be the basics; like times tables. That is one thing you just have to learn and no way of setting up. From that, you can move on. In my math classes, I remember struggling at the beginning because I had to just remember formulas. But, as the semester went on, everything I was learning was coming together to make sense. So problems, such as quadratic formulas made sense. For example, using the box method to figure out X. That helped me work through problems to get answers. Math can be tricky, but once you understand and remember certain formulas, they can all sort of connect together.