2 + 2 = 5

I'm not very good at math. That's a bit of an ironic statement given that most of the jobs I've had since graduate school have been fairly quantitative. And to be clear, I'm not saying that my calculus has gotten rusty since I took an AP class in high school or that I don't remember much about trigonometry. I never took calculus, AP or otherwise, nor pre-calc, nor trig. And it isn't that I just haven't taken advanced math classes -- my "basic" math skills are not as strong as they should be. What happened?

My recollection is as follows. Back when I was in 6th grade, I took a pair of tests. One test was to see if I could skip 7th grade math, the other was to see if I could understand abstract concepts (i.e., the letter "x" representing an unknown value in an equation). Passing both tests meant that you would take pre-algebra in 7th grade, algebra in 8th, geometry in 9th, trigonometry in 10th, pre-calculus in 11th, and AP calculus senior year. (This was a a couple of decades ago -- I'm sure the math curriculum has changed several times since then.) Although I initially passed both tests, it turns out that there was a grading error and I really didn't have sufficient command of "basic" math skills to warrant skipping "regular" math in 7th grade. In other words, I don't have problems with the notion of abstraction, I just have trouble actually "solving for x" in the real world.

Needless to say, I didn't do very well in math in high school. (I think I took algebra twice.) At the time, only two years of math were required, so I never took anything past geometry (though I did take a single "consumer math" course as a college undergrad to fulfill a graduation requirement there). As I had little interest in pursuing any career that required mathematical knowledge, I wasn't too worried about my lack of mathematical background. After college, I got a job in Japan teaching English as a foreign language didn't give it another thought. I knew that I wasn't good in math, but (I thought) it didn't matter.

I became acutely aware of my math deficiencies in graduate school, when my interest in teaching English as a foreign language morphed into an interest in second language acquisition research and language testing in particular. In addition to readjusting to life as a student almost a decade after graduating college, it was painfully obvious that I was missing some of the foundational building blocks for the stats classes I was taking and the research literature I was reading. Although I've managed to get by (research and assessment are never JUST about the numbers), I still feel like an English Literature major who only read the Cliff's Notes version of the Western cannon.

I guess I'm living proof that you can have a fairly data heavy career even without a solid background in math. That said, I really don't recommend it. Building up your skills early if possible is probably a much better approach.