Is extension maths for HSC compulsory for doing engineering at uni?

Maths Noob? Can I turn it around?

• Hi everyone, I am at a pretty stressful time in my little life right now and I could do with some help. Thinking 24/7 about what to do next and in the future really takes it out of you. It also makes you wan't to watch cartoons like the "Lion King" to remind you of the times when all you had to worry about was whether Mufasa was going to be OK. As a kid maths was never spoken about as an important thing and so I never really cared for it because I had the "maths is pointless, I will never need it" kind of attitude that most British people and kids have. My family holds the belief that "no one in our family has the math gene". My Dad struggles to add and times things together, but he got in with the wrong crown very early on in life and missed his GCSE's Obviously by the time I get to the middle of primary school I am starting to sweat. People around me are steaming ahead and I start to feel crappy that I am so bad at maths. So I start getting nervous and that helpless feeling of doom comes over me which makes me nervous and in turn I shut down and become scared of maths and STOP LEARNING. Maths has always been the thing that has held me back in my life and I really want to change my attitude towards it so that I can enjoy it. I don't want to stay at university because I have decided that I want to do an engineering/electrical apprenticeship which was the other option I was considering before UNI. However I need good maths skills for engineering and electronics. My questions then (finally) are: 1) Do you think I can save my maths education from the depths with the right motivation and dedication along with enjoyment? 2) Do you think that some people are naturally good at maths? Or is it about the preschool attitudes to maths that people adopt and this makes them either hate maths like me, or enjoy it because at home it is important? Many thank's.

• Answer:

  Well my dad is naturally good at math. I do not know if that is why I am good at it too. I think yea if you do not get interested in math at in the early maths (simple math to algebra) you never really try to master it therefore you're creating a weak foundation for harder maths you encounter in subjects such as engineering and physics. I guess if you are not interested you do bad and if you keep doing bad you get even more uninterested and the cycle will go on if that makes any sense. I know people in engineering who are not good at math that sometime no matter how interested they want to be they just can't because they are unable to understand abstract concepts where the math is heavy such as electromagnetics.