Most of my life I felt dumb... because even though I am reasonably intelligent, numbers are not my friend. I transpose numbers and have difficulty memorizing formulas... well... the notion of doing math has literally made me ill. It's only been in the past few years that I have realized, I do use math ... creatively.
People have been counting on their fingers for a long time...
When I was wee... knee high to a grasshopper as it were... I asked for one of those toy sewing machines. I found myself next to the treadle sewing machine and the fabric scraps and holding my doll and a tape measure. Who needs a toy sewing machine when you have the real thing?
When I wanted to make cookies in my own toy oven (remember those "easy bake ovens"?), I found myself in the kitchen with a cookbook and measuring cups in my hands. I learned on a real stove, why buy a toy?
When I worked with my dad in the shop, I knew the difference between a 5/8" wrench and a 7/16" wrench... and which was bigger... and why.
By the time I was in fourth grade, I had been measuring food and people and cloth and tools for some time ... my teacher sent home a note admonishing my parents to stop teaching me fractions. grin.
I guess there were fundamental building blocks missing from my schema... never to be found... so I rarely got good grades in math classes. Smile.
Learning how to count in ASL (on one hand!) sure helped me out... In high school Home Ec, I could make great clothes... economic use of resources, fabric, thread, electricity...
albeit not the way the teacher taught it... smile... I got a passing grade by a hair. As a young adult, money was scarce, so I frugally shopped and balanced our checkbook to the penny. Though not how anyone else would do it. The instructions on the bank statement didn't make sense. Then when I took accounting in college for my math requirement, I barely squeaked by. I usually got the right answers, just not the way the teacher wanted. My brain seems to be wired differently than others... I don't know the 'right' way to do math I suppose. I use math in creative ways. Smile.
And I estimate pretty darn good. I'm a wiz at rounding up and down. Pete will start talking about how many bales each field has and I can usually tell him within five bales how many he has put up so far that year. Then he "does the math" only to grin and say how very close I came.
I'm pretty good at geometric figures too... Pete cut down a tree and swore it wouldn't hit the diesel tank... I knew what that tree was going to hit when it fell and what angle was best for cutting. I'm glad he listened to me. Laughs... so is he. Figuring numbers used to be the bane of my existence. Although I can't tell you formulas, I can tell you how much fabric for a shirt, and how to lay out a pattern for the best use of fabric, and it will fit. Things like two seam allowances of 3/8" add 3/4" to the total length. It feels like something anyone would know. But it's not. Even though I don't know the terms for conversion, if I can't find a particular measuring cup, I know how many of another cup is equivalent. The notion of six cups of apples for a pie is 1 & 1/2 quarts. That feels like everyday knowledge. But it's not.
I've decided, in my old age, that my math is different, my math is creative... not less than.
I can indeed do the math I need to accomplish what I want when I want. I can count out change, and I can cook a turkey, and I can sew a pair of pants. My practical, everyday knowledge of math, and tending to my everyday life is all the math I need to know. I can do algebra in my head even though I don't use the "formulas." I know geometry regardless of what it's called.
Story problems applicable to my life are generally easy (not so much that darn train traveling at 30 mph for X hours ... grin).