How to Beat Maths Anxiety and Even Find You Enjoy It
Why Read This
What Makes This Article Worth Your Time
Summary
What This Article Is About
Shayla Love explores the widespread phenomenon of math anxiety—the tension, apprehension, or fear that interferes with mathematical performance—which affects approximately 93% of US adults to some degree. Drawing on research from psychologists like Mark Ashcraft, educator Sheila Tobias, and Stanford professor Jo Boaler, the article traces how cultural myths about innate mathematical ability, harmful gender and racial stereotypes, and rigid teaching methods contribute to this pervasive problem that can limit educational and career opportunities.
The guide offers evidence-based strategies to overcome math anxiety, including challenging the myth of the “math person,” slowing down instead of racing through problems, using expressive writing to process emotions, adopting flexible mathematical thinking, teaching math to others to build confidence, and embracing a growth mindset that views struggle as brain development rather than failure. Love emphasizes that the goal isn’t mathematical perfection but developing a less stressful, potentially enjoyable relationship with numbers through recognizing that mathematical thinking exists throughout daily life and across diverse cultural traditions.
Key Points
Main Takeaways
Math Anxiety Is Widespread
About 93% of US adults experience some math anxiety, with 17% reporting high levels that can limit educational and career choices.
The “Math Person” Myth
The false belief that only certain people can do math creates unique performance anxiety and is often tied to harmful gender and racial stereotypes.
Speed Pressure Backfires
Timed math tests and emphasis on rapid problem-solving create toxic pressure; intelligent people actually take their time on difficult problems.
Multiple Solution Paths
Math isn’t just about getting the right answer—flexible thinking that explores different problem-solving approaches reduces anxiety and increases engagement.
Expressive Writing Helps
Writing about math-related emotions and anxieties for 5-10 minutes before problem-solving helps unload distracting thoughts and improves performance.
Struggle Indicates Growth
A growth mindset reframes difficulty as beneficial brain exercise rather than evidence of inadequacy, making challenges feel less threatening.
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Article Analysis
Breaking Down the Elements
Main Idea
Reframing Mathematical Competence
Math anxiety is a widespread, socially constructed phenomenon rooted in cultural myths about innate ability and harmful stereotypes rather than actual mathematical capacity. By challenging these beliefs and adopting evidence-based strategies—including expressive writing, flexible thinking, collaborative learning, and growth mindset—individuals can transform their relationship with mathematics from one of fear and avoidance to confidence and potential enjoyment, regardless of their current skill level.
Purpose
Empowering Through Education
Love’s purpose is to inform and empower readers by demystifying math anxiety through historical context, research evidence, and practical interventions. The guide aims to help readers recognize that their mathematical struggles likely stem from systemic educational failures and cultural conditioning rather than personal inadequacy, while providing actionable strategies to develop healthier attitudes toward mathematics. By legitimizing math anxiety as a real phenomenon while simultaneously offering hope for change, the article seeks to liberate readers from self-limiting beliefs.
Structure
Problem Definition → Myth-Busting → Practical Solutions
The article follows a clear problem-solution structure: opening with a historical anecdote establishing math anxiety’s reality, defining the phenomenon and demonstrating its prevalence, systematically dismantling contributing myths (the “math person,” speed requirements, right-or-wrong thinking), presenting eight numbered practical strategies with supporting research, and concluding with an expanded perspective on mathematics in everyday life. This progression moves readers from recognition through understanding to actionable intervention, with each section building logically on the previous one.
Tone
Empathetic, Reassuring & Evidence-Based
Love maintains a compassionate, non-judgmental tone that validates readers’ experiences (“It’s not shameful to bristle at the thought of doing maths problems”) while remaining grounded in research findings. The writing is accessible yet authoritative, drawing on expert voices without becoming academic or dense. There’s an underlying optimism and encouragement throughout, exemplified by the progression from understanding anxiety to finding potential enjoyment, making complex psychological concepts feel approachable and the prospect of change genuinely attainable.
Key Terms
Vocabulary from the Article
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Tough Words
Challenging Vocabulary
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The study of mathematical practices and concepts within different cultural contexts, examining how various societies develop and use quantitative thinking.
“A field called ethnomathematics studies cultural variations within maths, and the different ways that people have come up with quantifying the world around them.”
A learning disability that affects a person’s ability to understand fundamental numerical concepts, such as counting or recognizing numbers, similar to dyslexia for reading.
“Maths anxiety is considered distinct from dyscalculia, a learning disability that affects a person’s ability to understand fundamental numerical concepts.”
A large, uniform, and unchanging structure or entity; used metaphorically to describe something treated as a single, inflexible whole rather than diverse parts.
“Maths isn’t a monolith, and it isn’t only what you do inside a classroom either.”
Related to the physical and biological processes and functions of living organisms, particularly bodily responses to stimuli like stress or excitement.
“They’re able to use that physiological response, that arousal as a challenge, and so to go in and really give a good performance out there.”
Deeply entangled, involved, or caught up in something complex, making it difficult to separate or distinguish individual elements.
“Long enmeshed in the myth is the notion that it’s not just that some people are better at maths, but that those people fall into certain groups.”
Involving cooperation between two or more people or groups working together toward a shared goal, often producing better results than individual effort.
“He found that the students who did better were the ones who talked about maths with each other, and did their homework together, which he called collaborative learning.”
Reading Comprehension
Test Your Understanding
5 questions covering different RC question types
1According to the article, students who perform poorly in mathematics tests always experience high levels of math anxiety.
2Which of the following best describes Jo Boaler’s perspective on the “myth of a math person”?
3Select the sentence that best explains why expressive writing helps reduce math anxiety.
4Evaluate the following statements about strategies to overcome math anxiety based on the article.
In Finland, children’s math anxiety tends to decrease after beginning primary school, possibly due to less emphasis on high-stakes testing.
Flexible math thinking, which involves finding multiple solution paths, universally reduces anxiety for all learners according to the researchers cited.
Uri Treisman discovered that students who talked about math problems together and did homework collaboratively performed better in calculus courses.
Select True or False for all three statements, then click “Check Answers”
5Based on the article’s discussion of Carol Dweck’s research on growth mindset, what can be inferred about the relationship between praise and mathematical persistence?
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Math anxiety is defined as feeling tension, apprehension, or fear that specifically interferes with doing math or math performance. It goes beyond normal difficulty—it involves physical symptoms like trembling hands, nervous laughter, and defensive reactions about intelligence. The key distinction is that math anxiety creates emotional and physiological responses that actively impair performance, while simply finding math challenging doesn’t necessarily trigger these anxiety responses. Importantly, anxiety and ability aren’t directly correlated—some people with strong math skills still experience high anxiety.
Tobias opened the clinic at Wesleyan University in 1975 because she recognized math anxiety as a significant barrier preventing capable students, particularly women, from pursuing STEM fields and certain careers. By interviewing hundreds of college students, she documented how cultural messages like “girls don’t do math” and false beliefs about being “either good with numbers or good with words” were limiting educational choices. The university setting allowed her to study this phenomenon systematically and develop interventions, ultimately leading to her influential book that reframed math anxiety as a social justice issue rather than an individual failing.
Traditional math instruction often emphasizes memorizing procedures and arriving at single correct answers quickly, teaching math as a rigid, right-or-wrong subject. Flexible math thinking, by contrast, values exploring multiple solution pathways to the same problem and treats the process of problem-solving as interesting and valuable in itself. For example, when solving 18 × 5, some people might calculate (10 × 5) + (8 × 5), while others do (5 × 20) – 10. Both approaches reach 90, but flexible thinking recognizes that understanding these different pathways develops deeper mathematical understanding and reduces the performance pressure that fuels anxiety.
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This article is classified as Intermediate level. It presents psychological research and educational concepts using accessible language while introducing some technical vocabulary (like “ethnomathematics,” “dyscalculia,” and “self-efficacy”). The structure moves logically from problem identification through evidence-based solutions, requiring readers to follow extended arguments and synthesize information from multiple research studies. The content assumes general familiarity with educational psychology concepts but explains specialized terms clearly, making it appropriate for learners comfortable with analytical reading but not yet requiring advanced academic expertise.
Ethnomathematics—the study of how different cultures develop mathematical concepts—helps overcome math anxiety by demonstrating that mathematics isn’t a single, monolithic discipline with one “correct” approach. Learning that the Inkas used a base-five number system, or studying African mathematical traditions as Claudia Zaslavsky did, reveals that mathematical thinking is culturally diverse and universally human. This challenges the myth of the “math person” and helps anxious learners recognize that their struggles might stem from narrow Western educational approaches rather than personal inadequacy, opening up possibilities for alternative problem-solving methods that might resonate better with their thinking style.
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