Customer Reviews

Overcoming Math Anxiety

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

An excellent book! I credit this book, when used along with a college course about math anxiety, with removing my lifelong (40 yrs) math block. Now I know that I'm just as smart as anyone else who can do math -- there are just different ways to look at it! And now that I no longer view math as "hard", I can actually do it -- and I am amazed to say that I actually enjoy it! By the way, although the book may sound specifically aimed at females, I am a male and found it very relevant and helpful.

This is a great book to read if you are a math teacher, have kids, or ever had trouble with math. It explains math anxiety and what causes it. It is very interesting and really makes you think. Most people do not like math from something in their past and it makes you think of where you went wrong with math. If you are a teacher or parent, it really helps you see how one can have trouble with math and how to help them without bogging you down with equations or worksheets. Definitely a book that will make you think!

I read the original edition (1978) and could not put it down. I look forward to getting the latest edition, and I have recommended it to my students.

I was throughly pleased with this purchase. What I like the most is the research that went into explaining why you would have a phobia about math.

This book made me understand my students more.
But most of all, Tobias give a chance to look back one's past, how she liked math and how she feared it at the same time.
Every advice she gives is based on the real counselling. That was a wonderful help to my korea student. Math Anxiety is universial, like math. Thanks Ms. Tobias.

This book is truly a wonderful piece of work and is invaluable for teachers and students of mathematics. I recently joined the faculty in a business college of a large state university where all faculty have advising responibilities. I meet students all the time who tell me they just can't get through the math requirement. I have started assigning this book to my advisees. Those who actually sit down and read it all - and I mean all - report being able to breeze through math once they've digested the book. If the proof is in the pudding, this book delivers gallons of it. Can't recommend it highly enough.

Overcoming Math Anxiety is an excellent book for anyone interested in mathematics, teaching, or psychology. This book explains the causes of the mathematical anxiety and how it may be overcome. Tobias's examples are very helpful and may be the push someone needs in achieving success in a math class. Although this book has great information on the topic of anxiety as it relates to math, it is not a cure for those suffering from severe math anxiety. If you have some anxiety toward math and want to know the possible cause, have an interest in mathematics, or are interested in possible psychological causes, I highly recommend this book.

Dillon, OSU Comp Student 2010

I am grateful that Sheila Tobias opened up the issue of math anxiety a generation ago. She influenced me to become more aware of what was going on in the minds of my students, particularly at the developmental level. There is no doubt that my teaching became more "student-centered" as a result of her work. Her book is one among several that now deal with this issue of taking the mystique out of math, and bringing it down to the level of the average student.
by Sandra Manigault, author of The Book for Math Empowerment and Fragments of a Woman's Life

I haven't read all of this book. But what I have read I've found instructive, and helpful. I would like to add or reemphasize the following. Math anxiety doesn't just among laypeople, students, high school students, upper level students, and graduate students. It exists among professional mathematicians also. Look at the resistance among many current professional mathematicians to fuzzy logic. Fuzzy logicians and people who have applied such may also have this strong aversion, because they use words when doing their applications. Look at Bart Kosko who writes books talking about how with fuzzy logic we can do science with less math.
Students of the history of mathematics will also remember a certain mathematician saying "What good is your proof that pi is transcendental, when transcendental numbers don't even exist?" And who can forget another prominent historical mathematician the quote "God made the integers and the rest is the work of man." As if fractions didn't even exist mathematically! Nor imaginary numbers, or transcendental numbers! And even a contemporary, famous, first class mathematical physicist recently published a mathematical book paraphrasing this quote, I suspect, entitled "God made the Integers." Honestly, it looks like everyone, and by that I mean EVERYONE, has math anxiety in one form or another. So this sort of book can do good for EVERYONE.