Comment by openrisk

There is this element of abstract mathematical thinking that many young people get exposed to at some point in the educational system but just never "get it" and they disconnect. This is where it goes awry as the gap only widens later on and its a pity.

Working with symbols, equations etc. feels like it should be more widely accessible. Its almost a game-like pursuit, it should not be alienating.

It might be a failure of educators recognizing what are the pathways to get the brain to adopt these more abstract modes of representing and operating.

NB: mathematicians are not particularly interested in solving this, many seem to derive a silly pleasure of making math as exclusive as possible. Typical example is to refuse to use visual representation, which is imprecise but helps build intuition.