> Because I get frustrated with people. I feel like they refuse to even attempt to understand. They say to themselves "I'm a visual learner" (everyone is) or they seek solace in groups when mathematical notation is difficult to understand. It's ok if I don't understand this, and I don't even have to try, because lots of other people don't get it either!
But surely attempting to convince someone who is afraid to learn a given piece of mathematics that it is actually within his or her comprehension is a good thing, not a bad? One need not convince a die-hard visual learner that he or she should give up learning that way, only that he or she can, and probably should, strive to learn how to convert mathematics into a more visual form?
Incidentally, I think that I disagree with the statement that everyone is a visual learner. Without getting into the technical meaning of the term, if there is one, I believe that I don't learn by picturing images the way that I think people who say that they are visual learners believe that they are learning.
I'm quite certain you can understand a histogram a lot better than a long list of numbers, that a continuous function will make more sense if you're able to look at its graph, that you've doodled or scrawled on a board some sort of diagram to help you understand something.
We're not digital computers. We have a well-developed visual cortex and we have to use it in order to learn.
But surely attempting to convince someone who is afraid to learn a given piece of mathematics that it is actually within his or her comprehension is a good thing, not a bad? One need not convince a die-hard visual learner that he or she should give up learning that way, only that he or she can, and probably should, strive to learn how to convert mathematics into a more visual form?
(EDIT: I just noticed that dahart (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15362069) said much the same, and probably better.)
Incidentally, I think that I disagree with the statement that everyone is a visual learner. Without getting into the technical meaning of the term, if there is one, I believe that I don't learn by picturing images the way that I think people who say that they are visual learners believe that they are learning.