To learn math, drill and instill math skills, writes Barbara Oakley in the New York Times opinion column. If it’s hard, so much the better. An engineering professor at Oakland University in Rochester, Mich., she is the author of Learning How to Learn. Math is the language of science, engineering and technology. And like any language, it is best acquired through lengthy, in-depth practice. . . . When we learn to play an instrument — say, the guitar — it’s obvious that simply u

Brain training doesn’t work because your brain isn’t a muscle, writes James Thompson on the Unz Review. Improving working memory doesn’t transfer to other skills. Research studies have found that “the evidence that training with commercial brain-training software can enhance cognition outside the laboratory is limited and inconsistent” and that there’s “no evidence of a causal relationship between playing video games and enhanced cognitive ability.” Persuading people that the

On Medium, Alex Korchinski writes about what he learned by majoring in applied math — other than math. He learned to tolerate frustration and pain, build his toolbox of problem-solving tactics and check his work, writes Korchinski. Most all, he learned to “practice persistence.” In a famous study, classrooms of American and Japanese first graders were given an impossible math problem. The American students gave up after less than 30 seconds, while the Japanese students persis