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And if you're an administrator,make sure your teachers have the positive attitudes and mathematical confidence necessary to inspire confidence in all of their students.Also, don't let anyone spread the myth that boys are innately better than girls at math.That is completely false.If you experience math anxiety,it may not help to just know that math anxiety exists.Or perhaps it's reassuring to put a name to the problem.Regardless, if you take a look around yourself,the odds are good that you'll see someone experiencing the same thing as you.Just remember that the anxiety is not a reflection of your ability,but it is something you can conquer with time and awareness.

You can also use your knowledge about the brain to change your mindset.The brain is flexible,and the areas involved in math skills can always grow and develop.This is a psychological principle called the growth mindset.Thinking of yourself as someone who can grow and improve can actually help you grow and improve.If you're a teacher or parent of young children,try being playful with math and focusing on the creative aspects.That can build the numerical skills that help students approach math with confidence later on.Importantly, you should give children the time and space to work through their answers.

So if you experience mathematical anxiety,what can you do?Relaxation techniques, like short breathing exercises,have improved test performance in students with math anxiety.Writing down your worries can also help.This strategy may give you a chance to reevaluate a stressful experience,freeing up working memory.And if you have the chance, physical activity, like a brisk walk,deepens breathing and helps relieve muscle tension,preventing anxiety from building.

If parents talk about math like something challenging and unfamiliar,children can internalize that.Teachers with math anxiety are also likely to spread it to their students.Pressure to solve problems quickly dials up stress even more.And in some cultures, being good at math is a sign of being smart in general.When the stakes are that high,it's not surprising that students are anxious.Even Maryam Mirzakhani, an influential mathematician who was the first woman to win the Fields Medal,felt unconfident and lost interest in mathematics because her math teacher in middle school didn't think she was talented.

Worrying about being able to solve math problems,or not doing well on a test,eats up working memory,leaving less of it available to tackle the math itself.People can suddenly struggle with even basic math skills,like arithmetic, that they've otherwise mastered.Academic anxiety certainly isn't limited to math,but it does seem to happen much more frequently,and cause more harm in that subject.So why would that be?Researchers aren't yet sure,but some studies suggest that the way children are exposed to math by their parents and teachers play a large part.

But having mathematical anxiety doesn't necessarily mean you're bad at math -not even close.Laurent Schwartz went on to win the Fields Medal,the highest award in mathematics.People might think that they're anxious about math because they're bad at it,but it's often the other way around.They're doing poorly in math because they're anxious about it.Some psychologists think that's because math anxiety decreases a cognitive resource called working memory.That's the short-term memory system that helps you organize the information you need to complete a task.

When French mathematician Laurent Schwartz was in high school,he started to worry that he wasn't smart enough to solve math problems.Maybe you know a similar feeling.You sit down to take a math test,and you feel your heart beat faster and your palms start to sweat.You get butterflies in your stomach,and you can't concentrate.This phenomenon is called math anxiety,and if it happens to you,you're not alone.Researchers think about 20% of the population suffers from it.Some psychologists even consider it a diagnosable condition.

the more resonant details are added to an outlandish story,the more plausible it begins to seem.But ultimately, the likelihood a story is true can never be greater than the probability that its least likely component is trued.

So why do statements with more conditions sometimes seem more believable?This is a phenomenon known as the conjunction fallacy.When we're asked to make quick decisions, we tend to look for shortcuts.In this case, we look for what seems plausible rather than what is statistically most probable.On its own, Lucy being an artist doesn match the expectations formed by the preceding information.The additional detail about her playing poker gives us a narrative that resonates with our intuitions?it makes it seem more plausible.

For any possible set of events, the likelihood of A occurring will always be greater than the likelihood of A and B both occurring.If we took a random sample of a million people who majored in math,the subset who are portrait artists might be relatively small.But it will necessarily be bigger than the subset who are portrait artists and play poker.Anyone who belongs to the second group will also belong to the first?but not vice versa.The more conditions there are, the less likely an event becomes.

Look at the options again.How do we know the first statement is more likely to be true?Because it a less specific version of the second statement.Saying that Lucy is a portrait artist doesn make any claims about what else she might or might not do.But even though it far easier to imagine her playing poker than making art based on the background information,the second statement is only true if she does both of these things.However counterintuitive it seems to imagine Lucy as an artist,the second scenario adds another condition on top of that, making it less likely.

Meet Lucy.She was a math major in college,and aced all her courses in probability and statistics.Which do you think is more likely: that Lucy is a portrait artist,or that Lucy is a portrait artist who also plays poker?In studies of similar questions, up to 80 percent of participants chose the equivalent of the second statement:that Lucy is a portrait artist who also plays poker.After all, nothing we know about Lucy suggests an affinity for art,but statistics and probability are useful in poker.And yet, this is the wrong answer.

Because of his widespread anti-communist influence,hundreds of people have been incarcerated,and thousands have lost their jobs.Ah! Look what the communists did!

Anyway, your legal system supposedly recognizes this rule?so what are you all doing here?It July 17th, 1950,and the senate subcommittee has officially dismissed all charges against Kenyon.As they should!It 1954, and the senate has formally disciplined McCarthy.Took them long enough!He will serve out the rest of his term,but will never again be elected to a public office.

To assume a claim is true because it hasn been proven false ignores many other possibilities:that it hasn been proven false yet, that it can be proven true or false,or that it isn completely true or completely false, to name a few.This leads to a handy rule of thumb:the burden of proof lies with the person making the claim.In other words, you make the claim,you supply the proof.If someone told you aliens exist,would you head off to find proof that they don exist?Of course not.

That better.I surprised you good legislators have agreed to move this hearing forward.You're falling prey to a type of argument from ignorance:assuming that a claim is true because it hasn been proven false.The claim being Senator McCarthy accusations against Judge Kenyon,for which he provided no legitimate evidence.Is that right? I thought so.Some of the so-called communist organizations he accused her of joining don even exist.

You tell that person to show you the UFO.The same applies when someone makes a claim that contradicts an established consensus.So when all the available evidence suggests that humans are causing an increase in global temperatures,the burden of proof has been fulfilled?if you disagree, it becomes your responsibility to prove otherwise.Right?Ah, I e gotten ahead of myself.You'll see what I mean soon enough.

And we choose the option that seems more representative of the overall picture,regardless of its actual probability.This effect has been observed across multiple studies,including ones with participants who understood statistics well?from students betting on sequences of dice rolls,to foreign policy experts predicting the likelihood of a diplomatic crisis.The conjunction fallacy isn just a problem in hypothetical situations.Conspiracy theories and false news stories often rely on a version of the conjunction fallacy to seem credible?

The programmers counterintuitive solution was to replace this full ranking with a limited number of priority uckets.The system was less precise about what to do next but more than made up for it by spending more time making progress.So with your emails, insisting on always doing the very most important thing first could lead to a meltdown.Waking up to an inbox three times fuller than normal could take nine times longer to clear.You be better off replying in chronological order, or even at random!