Books › A Mind for Numbers
A Mind for Numbers
How to Excel at Math and Science
336 pages
A warm, science-backed pep talk that rewires how you think about learning, proving that no subject is out of your reach.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like sitting down with a deeply empathetic tutor who completely understands your academic anxieties and knows exactly how to dismantle them. The pace is steady and deliberate, encouraging you to pause and practice rather than rush through the chapters. Oakley cultivates a mood of profound optimism, replacing the dread of difficult subjects with a clarifying sense of empowerment. Her prose is conversational and rich with memorable analogies, effortlessly translating dense cognitive science into practical, everyday tools. It is an experience defined by sudden moments of clarity, as the invisible barriers to learning are gently dismantled. This is the perfect companion for struggling students, career-switchers, or anyone who has ever falsely believed they simply weren't smart enough to master complex material.
- Mood
- empowering
- clarifying
- optimistic
- focused
- Tone
- encouraging
- empathetic
- practical
- conversational
- scientific
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- overcoming self-doubt · the mechanics of learning · reframing failure · cognitive flexibility · lifelong learning
- The writing
- Clear, analogy-rich, and highly accessible, translating complex neuroscience into friendly, actionable advice.
- The arc
- Moves from the frustration of academic intimidation to the liberating realization that mastery is a matter of strategy, not innate genius.
- Who it's for
- Anyone who has ever felt they 'aren't a math person' and wants practical, science-backed tools to conquer intimidating subjects.
Content notes
- academic anxiety
- discussions of failure
About the book
The companion book to COURSERA®'s wildly popular massive open online course "Learning How to Learn"
Whether you are a student struggling to fulfill a math or science requirement, or you are embarking on a career change that requires a new skill set, A Mind for Numbers offers the tools you need to get a better grasp of that intimidating material. Engineering professor Barbara Oakley knows firsthand how it feels to struggle with math. She flunked her way through high school math and science courses, before enlisting in the army immediately after graduation. When she saw how her lack of mathematical and technical savvy severely limited her options—both to rise in the military and to explore other careers—she returned to school with a newfound determination to re-tool her brain to master the very subjects that had given her so much trouble throughout her entire life.
In A Mind for Numbers, Dr. Oakley lets us in on the secrets to learning effectively—secrets that even dedicated and successful students wish they’d known earlier. Contrary to popular belief, math requires creative, as well as analytical, thinking. Most people think that there’s only one way to do a problem, when in actuality, there are often a number of different solutions—you just need the creativity to see them. For example, there are more than three hundred different known proofs of the Pythagorean Theorem. In short, studying a problem in a laser-focused way until you reach a solution is not an effective way to learn. Rather, it involves taking the time to step away from a problem and allow the more relaxed and creative part of the brain to take over. The learning strategies in this book apply not only to math and science, but to any subject in which we struggle. We all have what it takes to excel in areas that don't seem to come naturally to us at first, and learning them does not have to be as painful as we might think.
Description from Open Library.
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