On intuiting, I have enough number sense that if I try to multiply two large numbers (by hand), say 27 times 145, and I get an answer that's off by an order of magnitude (say, 450), I can kind of tell it's wrong. My 6th grader? No clue. They try and teach this - what they teach is to test yourself by rounding - in my example, try 30 x 150 and see if what you got is close to that - but it's not sticking with my kid too easily. (My 3rd grader seems to have better instincts.)

My daughter is in 6th, and was grouped in advanced math up through 4th grade. That's part of the reason this drop is so frustrating for me.

My daughter is in 6th, and was grouped in advanced math up through 4th grade. That's part of the reason this drop is so frustrating for me.

Do you know what topics in particular she's struggling with?

Not an exhaustive list, but we are on ratios right now, and while she gets the basic concept fine by now, she has trouble with things like comparing ratios, esp comparing ratios represented in different formats, also ration comparisons like comparing miles/hour to feet/minute, comparing graphs to ratio tables. {Uh duh, I said that one twice, didn't i?} Also reiprocal fractions threw her.

Not an exhaustive list, but we are on ratios right now, and while she gets the basic concept fine by now, she has trouble with things like comparing ratios, esp comparing ratios represented in different formats, also ration comparisons like comparing miles/hour to feet/minute, comparing graphs to ratio tables. {Uh duh, I said that one twice, didn't i?} Also reiprocal fractions threw her.

Does she tend to do well with visual models of stuff? I like these videos for ratios. (There are a bunch in the series -- the next one will keep coming up as the first "related videos" link.) [link]

I'll have her take a look at those. Thank you!

I'm going to dinner tonight with a guy from OK Cupid. I can do this. Right?

Dinner with OK Cupid guy sounds easier to me than complex math!

Enjoy the dinner. It's just dinner and a bit of conversation. You can totally do this.

Enjoy the dinner. It's just dinner and a bit of conversation. You can totally do this.

Thanks. It's at a restaurant where I know the menu, so I don't need to look silly quizzing the waiter about whether something's vegan or not. I've talked to him online before. I'm going to get one drink, so that it can cut through the nerves a bit without making me too drunk. If it goes well, I'll ask if he wants to come see Frankenstein with me tomorrow.

I was good at geometry and trig when the trig was applied to something physical. But since I was so frustrated at algebra I didn't believe them when they said I was good at the other two. I put part of the blame on the mid-century thing of "Math is hard for girls", but I have to blame mental laziness as well. I was so used to non-math things being easy that I just shrugged and accepted that math was not going to be part of my world, despite all my teachers' efforts to get me engaged. It was years before I realized my presence in an invitation-only, 4-person applied math class, with bonus attendance at regional conferences, was not just because I was liked by the teachers. Engineering seemed interesting and I really wanted to take physics, but no, I was convinced that math was beyond me, and those classes required math--and it would have been the kind of math I was good at, too, applied math. But words made so much more sense to me.