I suck at Math!

Primary School

I believe I had quite a solid foundation in Mathematics when I was young thanks to KUMON/SPPS Math Olympiad Team, having moderate proficiency in algebra, albeit a low proficiency in geometry. I remember being more interested in BioChem, a bit inclined to the chemistry side (until 15 years old), but I nevertheless enjoyed the extra time training for Math Olympiads with Toby Lam.

One of the many competitions I joined

Secondary School

I slackened because High School Mathematics isn’t as fun as before (an emphasize on tedious geometry instead of Number Theory).

They put an emphasize on memorization instead of understanding as they didn’t include Calculus. I only realized the following after taking some non-compulsory calculus classes:

For example, \(ax^2+bx+c=0\) implies stationary Point at \(x=\frac{-b}{2a}\) by simple differentiation… (2nd derivative test shows Max/Min)

Detour:

This is similar to the Hessian Matrix \(\mathbf{H}=\left[\begin{array}{cccc} \frac{\partial^2 f}{\partial x_1^2} & \frac{\partial^2 f}{\partial x_1 \partial x_2} & \cdots & \frac{\partial^2 f}{\partial x_1 \partial x_n} \\ \frac{\partial^2 f}{\partial x_2 \partial x_1} & \frac{\partial^2 f}{\partial x_2^2} & \cdots & \frac{\partial^2 f}{\partial x_2 \partial x_n} \\ \vdots & \vdots & \ddots & \vdots \\ \frac{\partial^2 f}{\partial x_n \partial x_1} & \frac{\partial^2 f}{\partial x_n \partial x_2} & \cdots & \frac{\partial^2 f}{\partial x_n^2} \end{array}\right]\)

(Side Note: If you want to type Math Equations in your website PLEASE PRESS HERE)

Continuing

I clearly remember myself making tons of careless mistakes and finished the paper with tons of time remaining, but had 9 careless mistakes… 9! (out of 45)

HKDSE Mathematics(Compulsory) is uninspiring

I think M2 kinda went bad because I literally didn’t spend time revising. The only thing I was interested in was calculus because that is related to Physics…

My favourite areas in Physics are Perbuation Theory , Quantum Mechanics and Lagrangian Mechanics. Sadly both aren’t related to high school Math at all (except Calculus)

Orbital Mechanics is Fun.... 

University

Click the links to see the courses I chose:

I just suck at Number Theory and Probability and Statistics. While I’m ok in Multivariable Calculus. I have developed an interest in Differetial Equations because of Bessel function. However, I absolutely hate, or almost abhor, courses related to linear algebra

I believe I have spent much more time studying so my exam performance is quite decent, but I believe I need time to gain intuition towards what’s happening… I just suck at these…