Were you a high GPA student?

[paulpablo]

I had very low GPA from the start of high school.I barely passed math and physics.My chemistry was good for some time then it sucked too.
Basically,i was a loser in terms of grades in school.I was downright useless in school.

So what about you guys? I'm kind of curious about you guys because a majority of you guys seem smart.Also you guys are older - i might learn a thing or two? :-)

I got pretty low results for most exams so I chose the low option.

 When I worked up some motivation and didn't suffer from lack of sleep or nerves I had good enough grades overall to be put in the highest classes for English and Science but ultimately I did quite bad in both of those topics for the final exams.

When it comes to some topics like maths I don't know if I get bored of them because I'm crap at them or if I'm crap at them because I find them so soul destroying and boring or a mixture of both.

I find it hard to even describe how bored I get with maths, it's as if my brain swerves drastically in order to avoid the extreme boredom and instead of focusing I tend to start wondering how big the worlds biggest slug is, or what would it look like if you build a suit of armour from your own fingernails.

[robvalue]

Yeah, I know all about that. I used to be a maths teacher. I'm used to my enthusiasm not being shared!

People usually throw up the sign of the cross when they find out.

[Alex K]

@paulpablo

You likely haven't seen the *real* maths yet

[TheRealJoeFish]

I dug out my old high school book on non-Euclidean geometries last night and started working through it; I'm halfway through chapter 1 Although I'm a lawyer and have no desire to be a professional mathematician, I still read through my real analysis and number theory books occasionally, and regularly do problems from the Putnam Exam (which I took all four years), different mathematics olympiads, and such. Keeps me sharp.

[Alex K]

May I ask what topics are covered in the geometry book?

[pocaracas]

I find it hard to even describe how bored I get with maths, it's as if my brain swerves drastically in order to avoid the extreme boredom and instead of focusing I tend to start wondering how big the worlds biggest slug is, or what would it look like if you build a suit of armour from your own fingernails.

Biggest slug: the biggest I've seen is as large as a human hand... maybe the largest can be as large as an arm?

Armour from fingernails: a fingernail is about 1cmx1cm ~1cm^2 in area; your whole body has about 1.5 m^2 or skin area, so you'd need something like 15000 fingernails with no overlapping between them, or, if choose to build armor with overlapping elements for added strength, you'd use 50% more, or about 22500 fingernails. Maths helps with your mind wonderings!

[abaris]

Yeah, I know all about that. I used to be a maths teacher. I'm used to my enthusiasm not being shared!

People usually throw up the sign of the cross when they find out.

Not necessarily. There was one year we had a very enthusiastic math teacher. Nice man, liked by everyone and always trying to communicate his fascination. He was an astronomer, which made it a whole lot easier, since explaining math by using astronomical examples is much more interesting than just learning the formulas.

Sadly he left, finally getting a job in his chosen profession. And the teacher that came next, for the ensuing three years, saw it as her foremost duty to bore us to death.

[TheRealJoeFish]

May I ask what topics are covered in the geometry book?

I believe, essentially: 1) a history of Euclid's elements, including notions of constructibility, treated comparatively alongside Hilbert's axiomatization of geometry, 2) a discussion of the history of Euclid's fifth (parallel) postulate, along with various attempts to prove it, 3) the revolutionary work of Riemann and others, and why it provided the framework for non-Euclidean geometries, 4) the discovery/formulation of non-Euclidean geometries, and the accompanying proof of their consistency, and 5) specific topics in hyperbolic geometry.

[*Deidre*]

High GPA. I was born a nerd

[Faith No More]

I believe, essentially: 1) a history of Euclid's elements, including notions of constructibility, treated comparatively alongside Hilbert's axiomatization of geometry, 2) a discussion of the history of Euclid's fifth (parallel) postulate, along with various attempts to prove it, 3) the revolutionary work of Riemann and others, and why it provided the framework for non-Euclidean geometries, 4) the discovery/formulation of non-Euclidean geometries, and the accompanying proof of their consistency, and 5) specific topics in hyperbolic geometry.

Damn. And here I thought I had good math classes at high school. The closest I ever got to anything like that was my 10th grade geometry class that consisted entirely of geometric proofs. Every test was just several proofs to figure out. I loathed it at the time, probably because it wasn't as instinctual as everything I had encountered up until then, but of all the subjects I could go back to, that would be my first pick.