A Mind for Numbers - A Review

I have heard many people argue they can never succeed in a certain field of study because, they say, “I’m just not a math person.” The idea is that there are fields of knowledge that it requires some innate set of skills to gain any sort of foothold.

For the sake of debate, we might set aside those who are obviously especially gifted at some academic skill. One may, indeed, need to be specially gifted and then extensively trained to discover new proofs of mathematical ideas or originate create solutions to scientific problems. However, not having the capacity to be at the top of a field should not be confused with being unable to grasp the rudimentary aspects of it.

One of the central theses of Barbara Oakley’s book, A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science Even if You Flunked Algebra is that with due diligence, anyone can do well at Math and Science.

The examples tend to be oriented toward technical disciplines, but the reality is that this book is simply trying to teach habits that lead to academic success in any field. In fact, to someone who has done any significant research in metalearning or study habits, there is very little that is not known. Most of the information Oakley outlines is fairly intuitive for the experienced student.

That qualification is the key, though. Experienced students may have struggled through difficulties on their own, had a mentor who provided them guidance (like a parent, sibling, or neighbor), or simply have naturally fallen into a helpful set of habits related to study because of their environment.

Not everyone has the advantage of being homeschooled, having parents who teach and emphasize learning, or that have excelled in school and are able to help break down mental barriers when they arise. A Mind for Numbers is a treasure for those who are trying to figure out studying on their own, attempting to help a student grow when they aren’t really good students themselves, or looking for ways to restructure curriculum to set students up for success. The target audience of the book is high schoolers, but this is the sort of volume that is useful for college students or adult learners trying to retool for a better career, get a new certificate, or conquer a challenge that previously defeated them.

Oakley’s story is intriguing. Though she is now and engineering professor, she once believed she was incapable of doing math. At some point along the way, a family crisis led to an untimely move with an unhelpful teacher in a new school, all of which resulted in Oakley missing some key links in her mathematical understanding that made it hard for her to follow along in later efforts in the subject. Her natural reaction was the “sour grapes” approach, where she decided that math just wasn’t her thing and that was ok because it was a dumb subject anyway. She later enlisted in the Army, became a language specialist, earned a degree in Slavic languages, but came to realize that the career opportunities in that narrow field were quite limited. So, she decided to see if she could retrain herself to love math, and she pursued a degree in engineering. The end result being a lot of work to learn how to learn, a PhD in engineering, and a deep interested in the learning process.

Much of A Mind for Numbers is really just a plan to become a better student through better time management and prioritization techniques. There are no gimmicks about doing special online puzzles to improve spatial reasoning or whatever. Oakley offers explanations on why starting with easy problems, working examples in the textbook, and doing least-liked jobs first are part of getting through new or difficult subjects. There is a mix of practical wisdom and scientific data, along with the fact that the advice does not come from a parent or teacher who is already in an adversarial role. As a result, this might be a book that a struggling student may find helpful. Oakley digs into the brain science of procrastination, of test stress, and overconfidence. She offers some real, proven processes that will benefit most students in most subjects, even if it does not open up doors to a PhD for everyone.

The trick with any methodology is that the individual who needs the new technique has to want to apply it. There is no magic wand to shake over a student who is entirely uninterested in learning or overtly hostile to it. However, in many cases, those who are obstinate about studies often got that way because they weren’t particularly good at it, so Oakley’s book may offer a way to break a stalemate. Or, for the marginal student in a difficult situation, finding A Mind for Numbers in the library (or having it presented by a well-meaning mentor) may provide the beginning of a framework that can change their life.

One of the things I most appreciate about this book is that it does not make excessive promises. Oakley doesn’t promise that everyone can be a quantum physicist. She does, however, offer real hope that everyone can master even difficult scientific and mathematical concepts if they are willing to exert due diligence, apply themselves systematically, and given some of the basic resources necessary to be successful. That’s an honest claim that the book is entirely capable of delivering on.

A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If You Flunked Algebra)

By Oakley PhD, Barbara

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There Is Life After College - A Review

College is one of the biggest lifetime expenses and longest commitments of dedicated time many people ever make. The cost of college continues to rise and news outlets regularly report the high rates of underemployment and unemployment among recent college graduates. As a result, some families question whether a college education offers sufficient return on investment. Others are plowing ahead without thought and collecting six-digit debt burdens.

Jeffrey Selingo’s recent book, There is Life After College: What Parents and Students Should Know about Navigating School to Prepare for the Jobs of Tomorrow, tackles the topic of the value of college, particularly with respect to employability. Selingo covers a lot of ground in the book, but together he paints a fair picture, warns of some common pitfalls, and offers some recommendations for current and future college students.

Summary

In Chapter One, Selingo describes three categories of young people: Sprinters, Wanderers, and Stragglers. Sprinters are those who have launched careers and have some financial stability by the time they are thirty. Wanderers often graduate but have difficulty finding a career-type job, which retards their progress. Stragglers stumble through their twenties, often failing to finish school or find stable employment with long-term growth potential. Much of the rest of the book is built around helping people find their way into one of the top group.

The second chapter analyzes what employers are looking for. According to Selingo, some of the most common attributes in job descriptions are “baseline skills.” The book lists five of the most significant skills, which are far from academic: (1) Intellectual curiosity; (2) Depth of expertise, even in a non-degree area; (3) Awareness of and adaptability to tech; (4) Dealing with ambiguity; (5) Teachable humility. The careful reader will notice that specific skills in a major are not in this list. In other words, a key way to gain an advantage in the marketplace is by going beyond academic expertise and being a valuable part of the team.

After these important opening chapters, Selingo covers a variety of topics in rapid fire fashion. In Chapter Three, he explains the potential benefits of a gap year—as long as it is purposeful gap. The fourth chapter describes the value of going to a college that is near a center of interest for the student’s proposed first career; internships and other experiences are much more possible. Chapter Five emphasizes the value of internships, co-ops and other hands-on learning; many employers use such opportunities as an extended interview for future employees. In the sixth chapter, Selingo describes habits that are necessary for success after college and some programs that can help enhance them.

Chapter Seven offers some ideas about rethinking the bachelor’s degree, considering the value of two year degrees and other vocational learning. In the eighth chapter, Selingo surveys one potential shift in future education: just in time training, boot camps, and other modular programs. Then, in Chapter Nine, he sketches some of the common hiring practices among firms, which is key information for those seeking jobs. Finally, in the tenth chapter, Selingo highlights the importance of being able to tell your story. It isn’t enough to graduate, but employers want to know why you chose a particular major and what you have done to get there.

Analysis and Conclusion

The most significant value of this volume is that it answers questions vital to student success, efficient investment of tuition money and time, and successful navigation of the sometimes-confusing marketplace of colleges and universities. This is an accessible book that has important information for our time.

Surprisingly, Selingo’s book points to the enduring value of a liberal arts degree. There is certainly a need for technical specialization in certain fields, but being a well-developed human is just as important, and perhaps more so, than purely technical proficiency. At worst, a strong liberal arts core, which is at the heart of a lot of Christian higher education, appears to be an asset rather than a liability in the marketplace.

Certainly, this book is not a guaranteed method to be successful in life. In fact, Selingo simply assumes that success is being well-placed, well-compensated, and reasonably happy in one’s job. Whether the reader agrees with his end or not, he provides some helpful guidelines to get there. Even for those more interested in other careers, Selingo’s assurances of the value of liberal arts and meaningful experiences before and during college make this an engaging and valuable read.

There Is Life After College: What Parents and Students Should Know About Navigating School to Prepare for the Jobs of Tomorrow

$11.59

By Jeffrey J. Selingo

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NOTE: I was given a gratis copy of this volume by the publisher with no expectation of a positive review.

Some Lessons from Dissertation Writing

This week I turned in my dissertation. Now I wait for my defense. In the moment of euphoria before I find out everything that is wrong with the project I’ve been working on for a year, I decided to jot down some of the things that I’ve learned so far about the process.

Some of these lessons are based on advice and counsel that others gave me, but that I’ve since found to be wise. We’ll find out how well I did on the final product in a couple of months. Even if there are flaws (there are, trust me) in my dissertation, here are some things that I have learned through writing the longest academic work I’ve ever attempted.

1.         It’s never going to be perfect. – One of the hardest things to recognize just prior to my submittal of my dissertation was that there were still going to be some imperfections in the manuscript. I’ve read the completed manuscript multiple times. So has my wife. I have no doubt that there are still a few typos, missing words, extra spaces, or the like throughout. At some point you have to let it go.

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2.         You can’t read every possible source. – I wrote each of my chapters, referencing those volumes and thinkers that best related to my point in the text. However, as I was doing my final read through of the dissertation before submitting it, I kept on thinking of additional sources that could have bolstered my point or that I could have read. There are new books in the academic catalogs that are begging to be included in my bibliography and dozens of articles that I downloaded that I never got to read. I could have tried to read and cite more, but sooner or later you have to turn the project in.

3.         Having someone else read it is invaluable. – My amazingly patient wife also serves as my editor. She doesn’t do style manual stuff, but she does read for grammar, clarity, and typographical issues. Having her read my chapters to tell me where I made no sense or where I had errors made a huge difference in the end, I think. There were a number of places she called my attention to that were unclear and needed simple rewording to make the project better.

4.         This isn’t the best thing you will ever write. – Looking at the 358 pages of manuscript is pretty impressive. It’s the longest piece of scholarship I’ve ever written. In fact, most of the chapters are longer than any paper I’d previously written. What I had to continually fight back was the goal to make this my magnum opus. I will write something better later on, so I need to make a good effort but not think that this is the pinnacle of my scholarship. My scholarship and writing should get better in the future. That’s not a ding against my dissertation, it’s a reflection of academic maturation.

5.         Doing a read-through at the end is important. – Before I had the final proofreading done by my wife, I read through the dissertation from cover to cover in about two days. Since some of my chapters had been written about a year before, this was an important step in the editing process. By the end of the writing process I had developed some key phrases and learned to avoid others. I was able to edit the earlier chapters to reflect the language of the later chapters (chronologically) by the end. This step helps the project read more like a cohesive work of scholarship, instead of a collection of essays. I was also able to find some places where I could clarify my own explanations, which, I think, made the end product more readable for someone else.

6.         Creating a project plan with deadlines is vital. – The internet is flooded with “dissertation writing as project planning” sites. There is value in the approach. I only met a couple of my deadlines, so I had to keep revising and extending the project plan. However, by delineating the steps and what it would take to get there, I could focus on the next thing instead of getting overwhelmed by the size of the project. By having an internal deadline (with plenty of margin built in to the institutional deadline) I had something to keep me moving. Because I had looked at the institutional deadline and built my project plan based on that, I knew what I had to do to get the project in on time. This made it easier to prioritize so that I could know when I needed to lock myself away to write or when I could play another game of Monopoly with the kids.

7.         Stay on topic. – There were about a million times in the process of writing that I found interesting rabbit trails to go down. I even ventured down a few of them. I’ve got extensive notes and footnotes to prove it. However, when I was polishing my dissertation, most of the work of those rabbit trails ended up deleted from the final product. I may use some of the material for essays later on, but I sometimes spent a week on research that was interesting, but did little to support my final dissertation. A bit more discipline would have benefited me significantly.

8.         Keep notes on the side ideas. – I wasted some time along the way exploring rabbit trails. However, one of the things that I think will bear some fruit in the future is using some of that material and the ideas that I got while writing my dissertation to produce journal articles at a later date. I’ve got a list of potential topics with some sources that I can chase down now that I’ve finished my dissertation. These don’t all relate directly to my dissertation topic, but there is room for further research. I now have more ideas for the future than my life and schedule can possibly support.

There are probably more things that I’ve learned. Perhaps after my defense I’ll pick up the topic again. Or, I may discover that some of my lessons learned aren’t as helpful as I thought. I’ll let you know what the readers think.