<p>I think part of it has to do with the attitude towards math many students have, which is actually in a sense supported by our education system. People like to think “I’m bad at math, but that’s okay because it’s all useless anyway.” I especially see this attitude among girls, when I tell them that I am a physics major, they usually say something along the lines of “oh I’m so bad at math” and giggle. I really think this attitude is a cop out. People all learn and different ways and have different strengths and weaknesses. You will only have success if you are persistent and put in the effort. This is not encouraged in the US education system, math ability is seen as static; you either are good at math or you aren’t. I completely disagree with this assumption. Part of learning is finding out how you think and what approach is good for you. Math has enough abstraction that there are many ways to think about the same idea. This skill is very valuable in life. You may not ever have to solve a quadratic equation, but it may be good to know algebra for problems that involve estimating order of magnitude or scaling relations.</p>