entirely avoiding math classes in junior high and high schoo

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I'm good at math, but I do it my own way. What I remember from my school days is that it takes an enormous amount of energy to follow what the teacher is doing at a slow pace. My mind wanders. And then I find I'm behind and have lost the thread of what she's doing.

In college, some math courses did not grade homework at all. And personally, I benefit from doing fewer problems but doing them more thoroughly.

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So, maybe tutoring younger kids as an alternate? and striving to be a very good and respectful teacher

Maybe, passing AP tests on whatever the equivalent is this days?

And perhaps instead, taking auto repair, art, track, JROTC, drama, typing, business administration, chemistry 1 & 2, psychology, physics, photography, etc, etc, etc. That is, do the math almost casually on your own maybe occasionally hiring a tutor, and then take a class you're likely to get more out of.

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I'm now 53 years old. I wish I would have had this kind of opportunity when I was back in public school. And perhaps as a younger person today, you might.

PS i taught one year in high school in the '90s (I was not enough of an authoritarian individual!) and I kind of like to give advice every year before the start of the school year. If you're an older adult, I encourage you to consider doing the same.

If this applied to math classes, then it must apply to every other type of class too.
I wonder how that would work.
No graduation requirements of specific classes that you have to take?

I am interested in radical reform of education, but on this one just squarely working within the system.

You just take the test and pass math. You fully get the credit for math.

Alright, Temple Grandin talked about 3 preferred intellectual styles for persons on the Spectrum:
1) narrative / case study,
2) math / abstract, and
3) visual

I'm narrative / case study. So, if I'm trying to graph:

y = 1/(x-7)

at a certain point, the denominator will become a very small positive number and thus the graph will explode upward.

but coming from the other direction, the denominator will become a very small negative number, and thus the graph will explode downward.

In Calculus terms, the graph has no single 'Limit.' It does have two one-sided limits, but that distinction needs to be made.

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What might have helped me personally was a math tutoring lab where I could stop in once or twice a week for a half hour session. And that's it. I build on that and do stuff on my own.

And there would likely be weeks at a stretch where I didn't do math. And then weeks at a stretch where I really got into math. In time, I think I could finish the first semester early, and then the second semester early. I would like to be in position where I'm ahead of the game most of the time.

I kind of need to take my time and put math into words. And then I do very well.

y = 1/(x-7) defined everywhere except x equals 7.

Almost think that part's redundant, but there you have it.

When I was seven, a teacher punished me by not letting me do any math at all, because I liked it too much.

that seems kind of mean on the part of the teacher actually

Well, the punishment was established shortly after the beginning of the school year and remained in place till the end. I don't think it was actually meant to be lifted, but I had different teachers the following year and nobody seemed to bother to make sure I'd continue to be duly math-starved, so I didn't. I was left, however, feeling a deep and scathing guilt for many years every time I allowed myself to think of anything slightly math-related, even of particular numbers, unless I was explicitly commanded to do so.

It also didn't occur to me to tell my parents, expecting them to confirm my guilt and find the teacher's behavior very reasonable and fair; I was surprised to find this was not the case years later, when I casually decided one day to open up about it. Then my guilt slowly wore off, but it had already caused a permanent change in my favorite subjects.

It sounds like they went way overboard with the punishment, where the punishment became the end rather than merely a means to the end.

Most kids probably think their parents will side with authority.

I'm not a parent, so I may be wrong on this. But it sure seems like there would be some age-appropriate way to tell a child: You generally want to defer to authority. That's usually the percentage baseball move. But that doesn't mean authority is always right.

I have a math question. It may or may not interest you, but I'd like to pitch it to you.

Kind of on the theme that what if computer technology came before big time medical research.

Okay, let's say the experimental group is 20 persons whereas the control group has hundreds of persons of which we will randomly select 20 for comparison purposes. As always, you're trying to decide if the good results are due to the new experimental treatment or just good luck. Well, what if we repeatedly select random groups of 20 and ask how often these show the same positive results as the experimental group?

And if this happens less that 5% of the time, we can feel pretty confident the experimental treatment has a real effect.

At least it seems that way to me. What do you think?