There are two kinds of math students

There is a great deal of back and forth about whether or not there is such a thing as a "Math Brain." Just Googling the phrase "Is there such a thing as a Math Brain" I got results that went back and forth:

Can't add up? We are either born with a mathematical brain or not ... (Yes there is a difference, Aug 11, 2011)

'Not a Math Person': How to Remove Obstacles to Learning Math - KQED (No there is not a difference, Nov 30, 2015)

How Does a Mathematician's Brain Differ from That of a Mere Mortal ... (Yes there is a difference, Apr 12, 2016)
 
Reckon you were born without a brain for maths? Highly unlikely ... (No there is not a difference, Mar 26, 2016)
 
And so it goes
 

One of the things that fuels this yes/no debate is the debate over the idea that some people are left brain and others are right brain. Left brain people are supposed to be more analytical, and therefore math/science type people, and right brain people are supposed to be more intuitive and therefore liberal arts type people.

There are a couple problems with thinking of people in this binary way. First of all, unless the connection between the two sides of the brain, called the corpus callosum, is severed the two sides of the brain are used for just about everything we do. Furthermore, when we factor in the fact that different people have different learning styles we can work with different types of students to help them learn math, even if they are ‘right brained.’ Finally, notice in the diagram above that different things that are used in mathematics (which is shown as ‘left brained’) are useful in working in math. When you are reading a word problem, you need creativity, holistic thinking, and visualization to work out what is going on in the problem. When you get to higher level mathematics, creativity is definitely needed, to be able to go beyond what you already know.

Now, students may not like mathematics, and not wish to major in it, but that is separate from being able to do mathematics. I struggled with German, even though language is shown as ‘left brained,’ so you would think as a mathematics person, which is also ‘left brained,’ I should have had no problems. A great deal of my difficulty, in my opinion, from the fact that I was not at all enthusiastic about having to take a language for my degree.

To my mind, one of the reasons that students come to my classes being convinced that they are not able to do math is that they think that you have to be able to look at a problem and know how to solve it right away, every time. If you are not able to do this, they think, then you can’t really do math. 

Well, if you are taking math in high school, 5^th period, from a book that the school has been using for several years, chances are the teacher can whiz through all the problems without slowing down. But this has nothing with how long it takes to do the problem the first time you see it. One thing I like referring my students to is a scene from the first season of Big Bang Theory.

My favorite way of describing being a math student to my students is as follows.

            There are two types of math students.

The first, when they encounter a hard problem will scream, cry, throw things, cuss and eat too much ice cream, or smoke too many cigarettes. And when they finally get the right answer they go, “Oh thank you God. I never want to do that again.”  

The second, when they encounter a hard problem will scream, cry, throw things, cuss and eat too much ice cream, or smoke too many cigarettes. And when they finally get the right answer they go, “Woot! I did it!” And do a happy dance.

Just because it’s difficult doesn’t mean you can’t do it, it just means that you may not like it. A quote that I heard years ago, attributed to Gloria Steinem (I have not been able to confirm this, so take it with a grain of salt) that I absolutely agree with is, “There’s no such thing as a math brain any more than there is a history brain”