when I was in college decades ago tutoring new students in remedial algebra, I never found a kid who couldn’t eventually grasp the concepts.
I think half the problem is that teachers act like algebra is so abstract it’s like magic. In truth, you will be much better off in most of your endeavors if you learn how to view the world in different ways, one of which is the way that algebra works.
I think in my school district you can get a general high school degree without advanced algebra, you need the math for the advanced degree.
Someone else mentioned figuring out word problems. I am in a math-related field, and have many credits of higher math classes under my belt. I was never that good at the word problems. My brain tends to be too literal. But figuring out how to work through them was a skill I can apply to many different things I do, so I think it was useful.
For any of you freepers who know what I mean when I say “beamspace”, let me say that I could never fully grasp THAT concept either, which didn’t stop me from getting halfway through a masters of signal processing (all I wanted — I just needed to speak the language, I never wanted to do the work).
Never was good at algebra. Just a dumb question here. In solving the area of a triangle is a=1/2bh equal to a=1/2hb equal to a=bh/2 ?