Is It Possible to Have Too Much Math?

sbjdorlo
Sun, 16 Mar 2014 23:51:38 +0000

Hi OP,

I agree with others to follow your son’s lead in his love for math.

I have a son who also started algebra at age 7, but we were much more unstructured/unschoolish. (We homeschool) My son did what is termed “self-directed learning”. I let him do what he wanted with math and added structure when I couldn’t help him (which was by 6th grade). I didn’t know what I was doing, to be honest.

His path went like this:

Began algebra in 2nd grade and continued into 3rd. He read lots of books about math including ones mentioned above.

Found a local prof. who was teaching honors geometry to a group of homeschoolers, so my son took his semester long geometry class in 4th grade.

Didn’t know what I was doing so he went through another algebra book in 5th grade, still reading lots of math books like Cartoon Guide to Statistics, Math for the Real World, and so on.

6th grade found me asking my dad to tutor him in Alg II/Trig but my dad got sick, and my son just unschooled. He and a group of students also did some math from MathCounts books that year.

7th grade, I found a tutor who started working with him on Calculus and told me he should take Calc at the local UC. I didn’t want that and neither did he, so he ended up taking pre-calc. online through the local community college that spring.

He also did MathCounts, getting into the top 8 of our large city, but he didn’t have anyone to help him (his tutor said he couldn’t help him anymore), so he lost interest in math competitions.

In 8th grade, he took Calc I online at the local CC and then took a semester off of formal math. He still continued to read math books on his own.

In 9th grade, he went on campus and did Calc II and Calc III.

In 10th grade he did Linear Alg. and Dif. Equations at the local CC. He was done with all the CC math except for Discrete Math but he wasn’t interested in that.

Also in 10th, I found an online tutor/mentor, who worked with him on Dif Equations, Dynamical Systems, and Real Analysis in a very unschoolish and slow manner, and he worked with him for 2 1/2 years; that was his “formal” math for the last 2 years of high school.

Meanwhile, I encouraged him to try the local math circle in 10th grade since he needed a challenge. He agreed to go and that became a great place for him to be challenged. He did AMC, AIME, ARML, and the local math olympiad. He made a lot of friends there and it kept him challenged.

He also did a lot of college physics during high school and was actually more advanced in physics than math during high school.

Fast forward to today: He’s a math major at MIT, finishing his sophomore year. He got transfer credit for his CC math and was able to start with upper division math upon arrival. He’s now finishing all the math requirements for his math degree this semester.

I will say this-my son has a natural intuition about math and he’s a very fast thinker. However, because he started math competitions relatively late compared to most mathletes, he was lacking some of those skills and some knowledge that others had-things like number theory, probability, and other topics, so he was at a bit of a disadvantage in that way, but he’s obviously done well enough and loves MIT.

I’d say if a kid enjoys Art of Problem Solving materials or math competitions, they should do them earlier, but never force a student to do them.

I followed his lead for many years until it became apparent he needed more challenge. He’s so glad I “made” him try out the math circle as he has many friends at MIT from the very same math circle.

HTH and have fun with your mathy kid! :-)