Welcome to the 30 Day Challenge for July, where we’ll be looking at the STEM fields: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. I originally conceived of the as the Science & Math Challenge so those two categories will get more attention, but we will touch on all of them.

Today we want to know about your formative experiences learning about math. For most people this probably happened in school, but maybe you had a parent or other respected adult who introduced you to math in their own way. We asked about science yesterday but people’s relationships with mathematics are idiosyncratic enough that we wanted to give math its own moment in the sun.

• Was learning math fun or was it a chore?
• What topics did you particularly enjoy? Which ones did you hate?
• Are there any demonstrations or lessons that stood out for good or bad reasons?
• Were you a mathlete? Did you do MATHCOUNTS or any other type of math competition?
• Did “interest in math” equal “nerd” in your peer group? Was that label a mark of shame or a badge of honor?
• If you continued to study math after high school, what were those learning experiences like?

Bonus question: If you could give today’s math teachers one piece of advice, what would it be?