Math vs Verbal

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Is anyone else extremely good at verbal learning, but terrible with mathematics? I'm currently in graduate school, but my GRE scores were extremely biased toward the verbal scale -- 750 out of a possible 800, with 410 out of 800 in math. I've always known that verbal subjects were my forte and that my mathematical skills were comparatively weak, but I figured at this level I would be mostly focusing on my major. Unfortunately, I'm having to take a statistics course that may spell the end of my degree.

I just flat don't understand anything the instructor says or anything in the book. The lectures might as well be delivered in Cantonese. I find the section in the book and follow along on the homework, but only get about 70% of it correct even using a calculator. When I do get something correct, I still don't understand how it works. She wants us to explain how we got our answers and I just don't know. It's all gibberish. (As I've said before, numbers have personalities -- and none of them seem to like me very much.)

Right now, I'm staring at the latest set of homeworks, all due tomorrow morning, and am considering simply sending an email to the dean and resigning from the program before I fail this course. It's the only class I'm doing poorly in, though, and I really love my major, archaeology/iconography. This course is really eating at my self-confidence. If I can't manage the basic coursework, how can I manage the statistical analyses for my research? But then again, I read many journal articles in my major that don't include any reference to stats at all, so is it really all that important?

To return to my original question, is there anyone else who simply can't manage mathematics, but for whom verbal learning comes very easily? Is it possible to survive a graduate program with poor math skills?

Those upper level studies frighten me too. I'd like to go for psychiatry, but that means med school, which means upper level organic chemistry, which means mathematics.

I got an 800 verbal and a 760 math on the SAT, yet for me to lose that forty points was monumental; for me, either something is easy and I know it, or I don't. I have AP accreditation in calculus, but I struggle with community college algebra. If I immerse myself in math, I can learn it to a point, but I never understand it. So it always seems very difficult.

But pre-algebra came very easily, and I find such elementary problems relaxing. I think a lot of my difficulty with higher math comes with the removal of numbers and replacing them with letters representative of functions; the symbology does not mesh with mathematics.

If I may ask, what does Statistics have to do with Archaelogy? Why are you required to take that course?

I took Statistics for the first semester of my senior year in high school, and it turned out to be the biggest mistake of my high school career. I failed that class miserably and had to drop it at the end of the semester. To add insult to injury, since it was an elective and I had waited too long to get a GPA exemption, that grade is going into my GPA.

I do tend to have an easier time with English and Social Studies classes than with Math. Math has always been my worst subject. Whenever I'd taken a math class I always had to do my best just to pass.

Like I said, my forte tends to be Social Studies and English because it's easier for me to memorize historical events, dates, and vocabulary than to memorize complex mathematical formulas and equations.

I am pretty good at both verbal and visual learning, but mathematics I'm terrible at.

Sadly for me, quite a lot, if one is doing regular dirt archaeology. My focus is iconography, though, which is the study of symbol systems. Stats have a place in that as well, even though most of my variables are nominal, but I'd be much happier if I could just plug data into the SPSS program rather than having to work it out by hand as well. We're having to use both for this course. And, yes, it's required for the MA degree.

Sorry to hear about your experience with your class.

I was the exact opposite for the GRE, I got a perfect math, but 460/800 for the verbal.

I don't mind algebra, but I've never been successful with even basic calculations. I still add and subtract on my fingers most of the time. My dad bought a calculator for me when I was in the fifth grade to keep me from failing math, since I absolutely could not memorize multiplication tables no matter how hard I studied. If I'd had to do the math drills that my daughter went through, I never would have passed. Regular algebra was just logic puzzles, so it was easy as long as I had a calculator to do the math. Geometry was the same. Anything higher, though, just reverts to gibberish. It's very frustrating.

My writing was considered "writers' material" at age 17, and always stood out. My math is horrible for one who was a top student. If I try hard I can get 70 something after months, but it's much worse than the good ones. Oddly enough my chemistry is better than most people's. People look weird when I say it's easy to understand chem.

Well most chemistry does not require advanced maths to understand or do. Most organic and inorganic chemistry since WWII has been more about the shape of a molecule or orbital rather than just numbers. So a person who thinks in pictures not maths should be OK with most organic and inorganic chemistry.

The physical chemistry requires more maths however.

so what sort of intelligence is required in A-Level Chemistry?

I was awful at Chemistry, and yet I somehow managed to pass that class. To this day I have no idea how I managed to pass that class.

A-Level chemistry is easy to pass. (roughly equivalent to first year US uni courses). THey lower the passing mark for us because many people do badly in it. My teacher told us a story about a survey. 6 ppl found chem easy, and 6000 found it hard.

I am good at both and love both.
I do not live in the USA so I cannot give GRE scores.
I think.
I can give grades but they are in the 0,0-10,0 range instead of F-A range.

I've been working on a college degree for 22 years now. The toughest classes have been the required math and science featuring math. The accreditation for a BS in Construction management requires 3 math courses (essentially high school Algebra 1 and 2 and Trig) After failing the Algebra 1 5 times from 1988-2000 I finally found a very good tutor that I have been working with for 2 hrs a week for the last 3 years. It took me about a year each to pass Algebra 1 and 2 and I have been working through the trig syllabus for the last 9 months and am completely stumped. I can tell the tutor is frustrated, too but she is patient. I still have no idea how I'm going to get past the required Physics (failed 3 times) The college won't allow a substitution without a specific diagnosis of a math-related LD, but the test for that is prohibitively expensive. If I have a semester without math, I score a 4.0, yet simple high school level math is beyond my understanding. Damn required math!

I haven't taken the GRE exam, but if you're talking about Quantitative Methods, as in STAT 3301, then if you did well in college algebra, you should do well in that class.

Tim: I really only mentioned the test scores to underscore the difference between my math and verbal skills, so it really doesn't matter, per se. It's just an illustration.

The class is called Statistics for Anthropology. She's talking about calculus functions for some of these techniques and I've never taken calculus, so I'm kind of out of my depth at the moment.

I am feeling a lot better about it, though, right now. I talked to her on Monday and she gave me an extension for the two homework assignments, so I've got more time to try and work it all out. She said everyone was entitled to a mid-semester meltdown. This is the first time I've actually missed an assignment, even if I'm not doing particularly well on them.

I'm still concerned about my grade, though. I'm going to see if there's someone on campus who does statistics tutoring. Maybe getting another person's input will help make sense of it.