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Language is hard. In fact, it's infinitely harder and more complicated than math. And yet, nearly every small child can learn and master language. 语言真的很难。老实讲，它比数学要复杂得多，也困难得多。不过，几乎所有的小孩子都能够学习并且熟练掌握一门语言。 Why is math so overwhelming for so many students? And how high is the price we pay from having so many math-terrified or even math-illiterate people in our society? Too high, especially as the ability to grasp data and pursue advanced work that involves math is becoming increasingly important for both citizens and job applicants. 那到底为什么数学会让许多学生觉得无所适从呢？而因社会上这些“数学恐惧症患者”，甚至是“数学盲”的存在，我们又得付出多大的代价呢？这代价简直太大了，尤其是在当今社会，获取数据和从事高难度工作越来越成为普通人和求职者的必备能力。 It often starts with the problem of teaching math in the abstract. This misses the remarkable amount of mathematical knowledge that we humans already possess. We know how to solve for unknowns, for example. That's algebra. We also are able to think in terms of three dimensional spaces—that's geometry and trigonometry. So this mathematical language is the analytical expression of the way we already think. 问题一开始出在数学的抽象教学上。这就让我们错过了大量我们本身就具有的数学知识。我们知道如何去解决未知的东西，那么这就是代数。我们也知道用三维空间去思考--这就是几何学和三角学。这门数学语言其实就是我们思维方式的解析式。 | 
