In school I essentially hated all math beyond Algebra, because it started to become something less tangible and more rote. Which is a sensible way to teach it as a pure subject, but it completely undercuts it's utility and connection to real world problems and the intrigues that go along with them.
Once I started to really want to understand and write audio processing code, I suddenly had a framework to not only care about Trigonometry, but to actually apply it and to have a tool that would validate my understanding of it. That short feedback loop got me through the subject incredibly quickly.
I was completely blown away when I started reading some Linear Algebra material because I realized that I had essentially been doing it for years without even strictly realizing it. The subject came to me very quickly because I already had a solid "mechanical" understanding of how to implement systems utilizing a particular subset of it.
I think passion for the deeper maths is something most people just have to discover through application, and there just happen to be a rare few who discover a pure love of it very early in life.
It's interesting how opposite people's interests in math can be. I hated elementary arithmetic and its focus on memorization and speed. Once the focus switched to solving equations and became less about concrete numbers, that's when I shot from "severely underperforming his potential" to "a natural at math"
Once I started to really want to understand and write audio processing code, I suddenly had a framework to not only care about Trigonometry, but to actually apply it and to have a tool that would validate my understanding of it. That short feedback loop got me through the subject incredibly quickly.
I was completely blown away when I started reading some Linear Algebra material because I realized that I had essentially been doing it for years without even strictly realizing it. The subject came to me very quickly because I already had a solid "mechanical" understanding of how to implement systems utilizing a particular subset of it.
I think passion for the deeper maths is something most people just have to discover through application, and there just happen to be a rare few who discover a pure love of it very early in life.