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Everybody Hates Mathematics

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"Math class is tough!"
Teen Talk Barbie

Algebra! Calculus! Geometry! Arithmetic! How can we even begin to describe these unspeakable horrors, guaranteed to strike fear, anxiety, nausea, paranoia, madness, and paralysis into the hearts and souls of all? Mathematics, most of all the advanced courses that delve in otherworldly chaotic theories, easily presents itself as torturous, mindscrewy, or just downright Lovecraftian — to the point that the old man himself indeed was big on this bandwagon, largely because of having a problem with math himself.

Irrational fear of the theorem of Pythagoras is inevitable. Even the most basic of long division is portrayed as mindbogglingly difficult, especially for parents helping their grade-schoolers do homework. Usually when trying to portray math in this light, writers (particularly in visual media like film) will show a piece of paper/whiteboard/blackboard full of abominably complex and eldritch equations; use of integral signs, Gratuitous Greek letters (particularly pi and sigma), daemonic occultist geometries, the accursed variables 'x' and 'y' and suchforth are prevalent. Any scene where mathematics is being taught will invariably result in children being bored, falling asleep, or in a few cases, succumbing to gibbering schizophrenia from the Cyclopean confusion of it all (thus the Mad Mathematician).

To those who practice it, higher math is an art form like any other. The average person can criticize it as incomprehensible, but so are many beautiful and acclaimed works of art and science. Mathematicians imagine a situation, often very simple (a triangle inside a circle, or a sequence of numbers) and then through imaginative and often esoteric application of very basic axioms, find out incredible things; the axioms are the mathematician's paintbox, and the situation in question is their canvas. Constructing a proof is analogous to writing a poem or painting a picture; math is actually more about imagination, intuition and game-like problem solving than about simply following learned formulae and methods. Unfortunately, math education doesn't work like this; children are taughtnote  in bland black-and-white that a + b = c or that sin(2a) = 2sin(a)cos(a) but will never, or rarely, be told WHY, or asked to prove it; merely to commit these methods to memory, regurgitating them onto a set of dry, uninspired questions and exercises as required. As a final screw-you, it is most likely the reason why their grades drop as it often hammers the dreaded "F" or "Fail" on them. And that is not considering the fact that higher education usually requires you to pass every subject you take to graduate, meaning that maths (usually in the form of algebra) is often the reason why many college and university students fail their overall studies.

In short, people generally actually have no problem with maths, as long their future isn't staked on reciting it and what they are learning has application outside the books.

Probably occurs because Writers Cannot Do Math. See also: E = MC Hammer, in which writers who cannot do math try to represent it onscreen, and Mad Mathematician, in which people who do enjoy math are portrayed as utterly deranged.

Contrast Good with Numbers.

Note: Americans say "math" on the basis that it's an uncountable noun, but in the UK, they say "maths" on the basis that it's short for "mathematics", which, while still an uncountable noun, ends with "s" (as with physics, economics, statistics, etc.). Use the right word in the examples for whichever dialect you use. If you're not sure, just use the non-abbreviated "mathematics", which is correct on both sides of the Atlantic.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • Assassination Classroom's class 3-E seems to have the most problems with mathematics, with 8 of its students listing it as their weakest subject. Thankfully, they have Koro-sensei to alleviate that.
    • This honestly wouldn't be too bad in a normal school. But Principal Asano, who created Class-E as an incentive to the other classes to keep working hard so they don't end up in said class, can't stand the thought of Class-E actually daring to be achieve in their studies. So when mid-terms and final exams roll around, he stuffs the questions with college grade problems (keep in mind the setting is a middle school) most of which include advanced mathematics. Heck the final showdown between Karma and Asano's son is an extra tough math problem. Ironically Karma manages to solve it by realizing he can think outside the box then trying to solve it straight and is even surprised at how easy it was when the solution came to him.
  • When Yukari from Azumanga Daioh gets tired of being just a language teacher, she decided to teach math instead... for about five seconds; then she realizes she's not up to the task and switches to P.E., outdoors, in the cold. Even Minamo (generally the more competent of the two) is shown to be less than proficient in mathematics.
  • In the first episode of Cardcaptor Sakura, Sakura mentions that her least favourite subject is math.
  • Dragon Ball:
    • It's revealed in Dragon Ball GT that Goku can't even count without getting nervous. This caused problems for a short while when he needed to pull off a synchronized attack with Pan on Luud.
    • A continuity error since, way back in the original Dragon Ball, Master Roshi taught Goku how to count, and he had no such problem when the MC asked his age in the first Martial Arts Tournament he took part (he thought he was 14, but he learned he was 12 when he learned to count).
    • In Dragon Ball Z, Goku was able to count up to 9,999 during his training. Before he could say 10,000, his spaceship flew through a magnet field that changed the influenced the gravity control of the spaceship, and the gravity suddenly went up from 50G to 100G.
    • Chiaotzu was very weak at basic math, and since he needed to use his hands to perform his telekinetic attacks, Krillin was able to distract him by yelling some simple equations at him, forcing Chiaotzu to use his hands to count, and giving Krillin the opening he needed to knock Chiaotzu out of the ring. Chiaotzu's master then regretted neglecting that part of his student's education.
  • In Fate/Apocrypha, Jeanne d'Arc possesses the body of a young girl named Laeticia. In between battles, Jeanne decides to do Laeticia's math homework for her, but finds it vexing and considers it a true trial on par with battles to the death, though to be fair, the Grail Wars only give servants the basic knowledge needed to not draw attention to themselves and thus, along with her peasant status in life, such advanced mathematics would be way outside her wheelhouse. Sieg eventually gives her a few pointers.
  • Hilariously, Ed and Al in Fullmetal Alchemist find their math class boring, so they do alchemy-related math instead. They could have found the class too easy, or maybe they just don't like math that doesn't relate to alchemy.
  • InuYasha: In one episode, Kagome actually had a nightmare about geometry.
  • Kamen no Maid Guy's Naeka has difficulties with math that are as massive as her chest. Exactly as massive, in fact, because the central gag of that episode is that math skills are inversely proportionate to breast size. (Okay, she doesn't excel at other lessons but math is the one made most prominent.) On the flipside, Kogarashi taught at MIT. It's that kind of series.
  • In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's, Suzuka is the only one amongst Nanoha's circle of school friends who is neither an elite mage in a setting where the construction of magical circles requires a good deal of math, nor an overachiever who gets top marks at everything. She thus has sub-par grades in mathematics, although her language grades are not much better.
  • Rikka in Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions! is frankly terrible at it. While she lucks out in the anime due to the class average being lower than usual, in the light novels she has to retake the exams at least thrice, and passes none, with her highest being 30/100.
  • Mirai Asahina from Maho Girls Pretty Cure! averts Book Dumb for all subjects except for one: math. Thankfully, Riko (her partner) is Good with Numbers and agrees to help her. Despite this, Mirai nearly falls asleep after only 5 minutes of studying for a make-up exam. When Riko calls her out on it, Mirai responds that "Math is not exciting".
  • In the manga adaptation of Yume Nikki, Madotsuki backs out of the Number World after commenting that she's bad with math. Even ambiguous characters un-ambiguouosly hate math.

    Card Games 
  • The Star Wars Customizable Card Game has Brainiac.note  Brainiac's destiny number is pi. And his power is sqrt(3(x-y)+2(a-b)+pi), where x is the cards in your opponent's hand, y is the cards in your hand, a is the number of Force icons on your opponent's side, and b is the number of Force icons on your side. And this in a game where life totals are always integers. The fact that you're taking the square root makes this card effectively useless, especially if you're in the lead by an amount such that 3(x-y) + 2(a-b) < -pi; that gives him imaginary power.

    Comic Books 
  • Perhaps the most legendary story on this topic in comics is Disney's "Donald Duck in Mathmagic Land" from 1959, which was subsequently adapted as an animated cartoon. Forced to study his nephews' math book after Uncle Scrooge announces that Donald is in debt to him, Donald becomes so discouraged that he blurts out "I wish mathematics had never been invented!" — and as punishment is whisked off to Mathmagic Land, where is forced to learn that math is "the queen of all sciences...yet the greatest servant to man." Ironically, he returns from his journey thinking that mathematics is fun, and uses his new knowledge to play a joke on Scrooge.
  • The Bash Street Kids in The Beano who absolutely hate maths. This trope is averted with Cuthbert though who absolutely loves doing hard sums.
  • Justified in the instance of Jubilee from the X-Men — turns out she has dyscalculia, the mathematical equivalent of dyslexia.
  • The first Wolverine and the X-Men comic ends with a brochure on courses, including "Algebra Sucks, I Know, But You Still Have To Learn It".

    Fan Works 
  • All Mixed Up!:
    • Inverted for Oprah and for pretty much every other agent of Precinct 13579, since Odd Squad is an organization that has mathematics as its specialty and it's very much prevalent and very much loved by everyone. Oprah in particular, however, is a special case — on one hand, she likes math, and by extension likes Carol (the being that resides in the Math Room), because numbers never lie. On the other hand, she despises language and words, and by extension hates Carlos (the being that resides in the long-forgotten Language Room), because words can be mixed up and manipulated to the speaker's will whether for nefarious purposes or otherwise, which is something she learned from Olga back when she ran her fruit stand and the agent told her that numbers had nothing to do with her fruit going missing. This opinion of hers factors majorly into Mariana Mag's Face–Heel Turn and her character.
    • Played straight for Mariana Mag, who despises math but loves language because it's what she's good at. Even when she makes an effort to learn math, she finds she isn't skilled at it and goes back to her knowledge of language, much to Oprah's chagrin.
  • Fates Collide: Nora Valkyrie gets really annoyed that she has math class. She tries to use the fact that she had earlier saved her teacher's daughter's life to get an automatic A, but her teacher says while he is grateful, she's not getting off that easily.
  • Inverted in Karma in Retrograde. Touya made sure he was damn good at math so he could manage his finances while he attended U.A. While he enjoys reading, he hates Japanese literature and English, struggling in those areas even with Iida's help.

    Film — Animated 
  • In Incredibles 2, Bob tries to help Dash with his math homework, but is told that he has to do it in a new way (the films are set in the 1960s, making this a reference to New Math). This frustrates Bob, because he is unfamiliar with that method.
    Dash: Uh, dad? They want us to do it this(shows page from textbook) —way.
    Bob: What?! That doesn't make any sense, why would they change math?!
    Dash: Dad, it's oka—
    Bob: Math is math! MATH IS MATH!
  • Turning Red: Averted with Mei; one of the stickers on her flute case declares "This Girl Loves Math", and when math class begins she whips out her notebook and pencil in full gunslinger mode; clearly she's enjoying it a lot. Played straight with her classmates, though; they all groan quietly when their teacher begins to teach the quadratic formula, and once Mei's mom creates a ruckus, they all too eagerly abandon their lesson in favor of watching the chaos unfold.

    Film — Live-Action 
  • In Don't Look Up, Randall isn't thrilled by how Teddy asks him to present his and Kate's findings, possibly because he wants to avert this trope.
    Teddy: You're just telling a story. Keep it simple. No math.
    Randall: But it's all math.
  • In Mean Girls, Cady pretends to hate math to fit in with everyone else, even though she actually enjoys it. She asks the boy she likes to tutor her, even though he's even worse at it than she pretends to be.
  • In The Mirror Has Two Faces, Jeff Bridges is a math professor trying to figure out how to keep people interested in his class.
  • Oppenheimer: A running gag has various physicists, including Einstein, admit that they dislike math or aren't very good at it.
  • In Peggy Sue Got Married, the (seemingly) time-traveling title character tries to get out of math class by saying that she knows for a fact she will never use the course material in her adult life.
  • In Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Pintel, one of the Bumbling Henchmen Duo of pirates, seems to believe this, as his answer to Tia Dalma's question "What vexes all men?" is "Sums?"
  • In Principal Takes A Holiday, the math teacher is shown constantly droning on in a monotone voice, refusing to answer any questions until the end of the lecture. Finally, when the new (fake) principal changes the rules in the formerly-uptight school, one of the students refuses to take this and demands to know "what is X?" This prompts the teacher to try to make his class more engaging and entertaining.
  • In Real Genius the main character is attending a high-level math class that is initially full. However, as the semester wears on, the students are increasingly replaced with tape recorders until eventually even the teacher is replaced by a reel-to-reel recording, leaving our hero to brave the terrors of calculus alone.
  • A Serious Man: Larry, a physics professor, meets with a student who complains that while he cannot grasp the math in the course, he does understand the thought experiments (like Schrodinger's cat) and argues that should be enough. Larry insists that the thought experiments are just helpful illustrations, while the actual physics is the math.
  • Stand and Deliver shows that learning calculus at Garfield High School is every bit as challenging as the larger goal of escaping from poverty, with one student even having a Heroic BSoD over it.

    Literature 
  • In a non-fiction example, this trope helps explain why actress-turned-mathematician Danica McKeller (yes, Winnie Cooper from The Wonder Years) authored three books aimed at middle-school-aged girls to encourage developing their maths skills; "Math Doesn't Suck", "Kiss My Math" and "Hot X: Algebra Exposed".
  • Adrian Mole noted that one of the benefits of joining his local Good Samaritans group is that he gets to miss maths on Mondays.
  • Anne of Green Gables downplays this with Anne herself; she generally doesn't mind doing math, but she really doesn't like geometry and often struggles with it, even when she becomes a teacher. Her very first line in Anne's House of Dreams has her expressing relief that she no longer has to study or teach geometry, as she's locking away her old geometry textbooks in a trunk.
  • Parodied and punned in Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator: Mr. Wonka takes Charlie to Minusland, to rescue one of Charlie's grandparents. He tells Charlie what happens if a Gnoolie bites someone. The victim is first subtracted. Then he's divided. "It's long division and it's very painful." Finally he becomes one of them.
  • Confessions (Saint Augustine): Way back in the fourth century, Augustine attributes his hatred for school in large part to his distaste for math, preferring the idle stories of The Aeneid and other Latin epics.
  • The protagonist of The Confusions of Young Törless is actually quite intrigued by some mathematical concepts but finds his actual math teacher drab and disappointing.
  • Dave Barry Slept Here:
    And thus began the Space Race, which was to have an enormous worldwide impact on Mrs. DeLucia's fifth-grade class, which was where we were at the time. All of a sudden Mrs. DeLucia was telling us we were going to have to study a LOT more science and math, including such concepts as the "cosine." As if the whole thing were our fault.
    Discussion Question 2: Have you, or has anybody you have ever met, ever found any use for the cosine? We didn't think so.
  • Detective Shunpei Kusanagi of Keigo Higashino's novel The Devotion of Suspect X absolutely dreads learning math, which was his worst subject in high school, and consequently majored in sociology in university. His friend, Manabu Yukawa, is physics professor and frequently uses his knowledge of science and math to help him solve cases, and has the nickname of "Detective Galileo".
  • In Harry Potter, Hermione actually somewhat enjoys Arithmancy, the magical equivalent of math, but all the other characters find it fiendishly difficult and avoid it at every chance. In one conversation, Hermione does acknowledge that she considers Arithmancy the most difficult subject in her class rotation, though it's another class that ends up as the lone E on her report card.
  • Honor Harrington has a mental block when it comes to math. She's actually quite capable when she has to make an intuitive, off-the-cuff course change in the middle of combat, but her performance anxiety in lower-pressure environments leaves her with a justified dislike of astrogation.
  • There exists a book called I Hate Mathematics! written specifically to deal with the Real Life examples.
  • An educational children's book by Marilyn Burns and Martha Weston is entitled, The 'I Hate Mathematics!' Book. Of course, some Reverse Psychology is secretly in play here and it's actually designed to show how mathematical reasoning can be fun.
  • A Mango-Shaped Space: Math has always been Mia's worst subject. She especially struggles with pre-algebra because she has synesthesia, and she has trouble thinking of X as being equal to a number when that number isn't the same color as X. At a synesthesia meetup, she meets people who had even worse problems with math because they saw numbers as having personalities and felt guilty pairing up numbers that didn't get along.
  • In The Man Without Qualities, Robert Musil defines a soul as "that which runs away and hides whenever someone mentions algebra".
  • In The Princess Diaries, Mia hates — and doesn't understand — math, be it pre-calculus or geometry. This makes it awkward when her mother marries her geometry teacher.
  • Yamagi Noriko from Project NRI is a brilliant mathematician. Oh, and she hates math.
  • The Science of Discworld parodies A Brief History Of Time, which notes the editor's belief that each equation halves a book's sales. The Discworld book chooses not to include a specific equation, and thus doubles its sales.
  • Sansa Stark from A Song of Ice and Fire is good at everything a lady ought to be good at—except for the math necessary to keep track of the household accounts.
  • Amory Blaine, the protagonist of This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald, dislikes math and science, and prefers studying literature and history. His mentor Thayer Darcy is similarly not a fan of math.
  • Bella in The Twilight Saga hates math; it's her worst subject.
  • Wizarding School in the The Wheel of Time has an abandoned and unused section of the library that no one ever uses. It contains math books.
  • In Will Save the Galaxy for Food, people have turned math terms into ersatz swearwords.

    Live-Action TV 
  • In an episode of 3rd Rock from the Sun, Dick was severely disheartened to discover his students didn't actually like physics, and even more so when his least favorite student was the only one who did.
  • An episode of 7th Heaven involved Annie and Mary breaking down and crying about how much they hated maths.
  • In The Adventures of Shirley Holmes, Bo and Parker, especially. In "Calculated Crime," Sussex Academy suddenly eliminates math from its curriculum...
    Bart: Do you know what that means?
    Bo: Yes. I'm having the luckiest day of my life, possibly of anyone's life, ever.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer
    • In the pilot episode, Xander tells Willow that he's having problems with his math homework. When she asks which part, he replies "The math."
    • A handsome boy tries to chat up Buffy, mentioning that they were in the same Algebra class. Buffy apologises for not remembering him as she represses anything math-related.
    • Anya was an extremely powerful vengeance demon who got turned into a human girl. She was lamenting her fate with "For a thousand years I wielded the powers of the wish. I brought ruin to the heads of unfaithful men. I brought forth destruction and chaos for the pleasure of the lower beings. I was feared and worshipped across the mortal globe and now I'm stuck at Sunnydale High! Mortal. Child. And I'm flunking math." Which may have been the one that really got her, because in later seasons, she was quite economically minded.
  • Degrassi: The Next Generation does this with polynomials. It's an in-joke; polynomials foiled all the writers in math class.
  • The title character of Everybody Hates Chris (as well as the other kid characters) are examples of this trope. This in itself is unremarkable, but the opening credits in some seasons depict a textbook cover that reads "Everybody Hates Trigonometry." Additionally, one episode of the series even bears the title of "Everybody Hates Math".
  • The Mr. Potato Head Show: One episode had the TV Guys tell Mr. Potato Head and his crew to do an educational superhero show. When Mr. Potato Head's character sang a song about the Pythagorean Theorem right before a battle with an evil robot, the evil robot just moaned "I hate math!", filled up its bubble-helmet with whipped cream in a panic, and fainted.
  • Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide: Ned hates Math. Cookie loves it and Moze initially loved it, but started having trouble with it after her regular teacher was replaced with a student teacher. She was adamant that she did not hate it, though.
  • NUMB3RS plays with, inverts, and subverts this trope. Several characters, including lead Charlie Epps, love math, and those who don't love math are dependent on those who do. Which is spelled out in the opening narration:
    "We all use math every day! To forecast weather, to tell time, to handle money. We also use math to analyze crime, reveal patterns, predict behavior. Using numbers, we can solve the biggest mysteries we know."
  • In Queer as Folk (US), after Ted (who's an accountant) has gotten a new job, Emmett calls him:
    Emmett: Hey! I just called to see how it's going.
    Ted: Oh, it's great, couldn't be better.
    Emmett: So what's it like?
    Ted: Glorious. I have a desk and a chair and a computer.
    Emmett: What's the colour scheme?
    Ted: Beigey grey. Or greyish beige, take your pick.
    Emmett: Well, that sounds perfect, honey. Alright, just stay off youknowwhat.com. [hangs up] Thank you God, for making me bad at math.
  • In Saved by the Bell, Jessie Spano's famous road to destruction all started with a geometry midterm.
  • In the Ten Little Murder Victims episode of Square One TV's Mathnet, the villain has purposefully picked his victims because they managed to overturn their convictions by using math, which he's convinced is cheating because he doesn't follow their explanations.
  • In Veep, Jonah struggled in math class (he claims to have a learning disorder, although this is either true or him trying to excuse his stupidity), which comes up when his strained relationship with his former stepfather-now-father-in-law is revealed, in that his former stepdad was his math teacher and gave him bad grades. While running for President, Jonah gets back at his former stepdad by rousing his supporters about how he'll ban math because not only is it hard, but because algebra was invented by Muslims and their numbers are "Muslim numbers" (Arabic).
    Jonah: Algebra?! More like AL-JAZEEHRA!
  • Deconstructed in The Wire. While most of the low-level criminals do think that math is boring, they do acknowledge its importance: Failing to maintain a proper count of his merchandise and income can land a drug dealer in big trouble with his boss. Likewise, detectives Freamon and Pryzbylewski show how to crack codes, detect patterns and track down the criminals' money using math. When Pryzbylewski pursues a career in education, he initially has problems keeping his class interested in math. He gains his students' interest when he shows how to use probability math to gain an advantage in gambling (which gets him in a bit of trouble when his superiors find out). And while drug kingpin Russel Bell puts his evening lessons in economics to good use during the day, his enthusiasm fails to rub off to his underlings or his partner-in-crime, Avon Barksdale.

    Music 
  • The Jimmy Buffett song "Math Suks".
    Geometry and trigonometry
    There are numbers to big to be named
    Numerical precision is a science with a mission
    And I think its' gonna drive me insane
  • Sam Cooke's "(What A) Wonderful World" features this verse:
    Don't know much about geometry
    Don't know much trigonometry,
    Don't know much about algebra,
    Don't know what a slide rule is for.
  • Humorist/songwriter/math professor Tom Lehrer's song "New Math", from That Was the Year That Was, pokes fun at this attitude, especially the result of the 1960s attempt to introduce set theory in elementary school.
    Hooray for New Math, New Math
    It won't do you any good to review math
    It's so simple, so very simple
    That only a child can do it!
  • Moosebutter's song "Uncle Earl's Hairpiece", which mostly contains lyrics about various bad things that have happened to the singer, contains the lyric: "My poor brain was pureed when I tried to do math..."
  • During Pink Floyd's P*U*L*S*E tour, the intro video for "Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)" showed a student's hand writing "E=MC^2" on a test sheet full of other formulas, and scribbling it out in frustration.
  • In the Glory Hammer song "Masters of the Galaxy,'' Dreadlord Prolteus is said to have "anti-telharsic power," which means letters as they pertain to math. Simply put, his evil magic comes from knowing how to do algebra.
  • The will.i.am song "T.H.E. (The Hardest Ever)" has guest singer Mick Jagger sing that the song's beat is "hard like geometry and trigonometry."

    Newspaper Comics 
  • In Calvin and Hobbes, Calvin has historically had a strong aversion to arithmetic.
    • He once claimed that math was a religion, and that he, as a "math atheist", should be excused from taking it.
    • His dad once tried to engage him in his homework.
      Dad: (pointing to homework page) ...Now, look, you've put here that 8 - 3 = 14. You know that can't be right.
      Calvin: Why not?
      Dad: You can't subtract from something and get something bigger.
      Calvin: Yes, you can! It's a free country! I can do what I want!
      • After that lesson, Calvin and Susie made a bet over who could get a better score on the math test, with the winner getting a quarter (25 cents). After Calvin, unsurprisingly, bombs the math test, he tells Hobbes about how he ended up winning because instead of giving Susie one quarter, he gave her three dimes (30 cents). Hobbes tells him he should study more.
    • And on another occasion, when he and Hobbes are careening down a hill on their toboggan:
      Calvin: I wonder if we could find out how fast we go on our sled.
      Hobbes: I suppose we could measure the height of the hill, the length of our descent, and input that in the proper formula.
      Calvin: That sounds like math.
      Hobbes: Um... yes...
      Calvin: Suddenly, I've stopped caring.
    • One of Calvin's Spaceman Spiff fantasies has him imagining summoned to the blackboard to solve a first-grade arithmetic problem (11 - 4) as being chosen as a Human Sacrifice to the alien God of Evil known as "Nollij".
  • The Far Side once showed us "Hell's Library", filled with nothing but books full of story problems.
  • In one Foxtrot strip, Peter recounts how a Marine Corps recruiter said that enlisting guaranteed getting up at dawn, to do rigorous exercises, eating bad tasting food, and other hardships that come with joining the military. When Paige, his sister, asks how that's supposed to entice them to sign up right after high school, Peter responds that the recruiter pulled out a thick college algebra textbook to show what the alternative is, and says "He couldn't hand out the applications fast enough!."
  • A Garfield strip had Jon recalling a teacher "[whose] textbook always made me cry... Algebra". (the comments also show many people with equally bad memories)
  • Several arcs of Peanuts showed Sally struggling with the "new math" and driving both Charlie Brown and Linus up the wall as they tried tutoring her. Peppermint Patty doesn't like it either, although the problems asked in her class are often hard ones that grade school students wouldn't be studying. (Ironically, she really hated learning the metric system, something Schulz seemed to believe the United States would eventually adopt.)
    Sally: ALL I WANT TO KNOW IS HOW MUCH IS TWO AND TWO!!!

    Professional Wrestling 
  • Played with in the case of The Kimber Bombs, who will eagerly use mathematics to justify their inane stance, and in the process expose that they are really bad with numbers, which always throws off their equations. Cherry is openly intimidated by numbers with more than two digits.

    Radio 
  • The subject is addressed in an episode of The Infinite Monkey Cage, "The Return of Science". One guest, Professor Robert Winston, expressed the opinion that, in his experience, ignorance of science, mathematics and engineering in intellectual circles and the media was much less acceptable since the 2000s.
  • Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me: For the "Lightning Fill in the Blank" segment, the third-place panelist leading into the segment goes first, then the second place and the lead. Before the last panelist goes, the host, Peter Sagal, asks the scorekeeper how many correct answers that panelist needs to get in order to win the game. Since the questions are worth two points in this segment, this involves a bit of math, and awareness of how the standing even or odd scores will affect whether a tally will be a tie or a win. (The formula is usually, "She needs five to tie, and six to win.") Peter sometimes lampshades this as "the math question". Guest scorekeepers can react to it with varying levels of enthusiasm.
    Corey Flintoff: (under his breath) I hate this.

    Stand-Up Comedy 
  • Bill Engvall recounts a time that his preteen daughter came to him for help with her math homework:
    Bill: "Sure, baby, let me take a look at that for ya."
    *Alternates wide-eyed glance between his daughter and her worksheet before handing it back to her*
    Bill: "...When'd they start puttin' letters with it?"

    Toys 
  • The early 90s "Teen Talk Barbie" doll would say, "Math class is tough!" The phrase was later removed due to controversy: it seems that the Moral Guardians, along with math teachers, did not want to encourage the stereotype that girls suck at math. The stories about it at the time mostly omitted the word "class" from the statement, which is probably why there was such an uproar: "Math class is tough" means "This particular course is difficult." "Math is tough" was taken as implying "Girls are stupid." Amongst Barbie's many jobs over the years, she's been a dentist, pediatrician, and veterinarian (all jobs which require high level math skills to get through the schooling), so it's assumed Barbie should be good at math (however, being proficient in something doesn't exclude believing it's difficult).

    Video Games 
  • Inverted with Kenny Kawaguchi from Backyard Sports, who likes math and almost nothing else in school.
  • In Baldi's Basics in Education and Learning, not only is math so hard that it's literally unsolvable, but getting even a single problem wrong sics a psychotic lunatic on you.
  • Escape From St. Mary's: Your hatred of math class sets you off on your adventure.
  • In Exile/Avernum II, you and your party (which may include wise, bearded scholars adept in both forgotten lore and cutting edge magical research. People who have deciphered and learned complex spells from faded parchments buried in the ruins of ancient civilizations, written in tongues long dead) visit a sleepy little bed & breakfast owned by a farmer. While poking around, you discover books owned by the farmer's wife, full of horrifyingly alien texts and eldritch symbols detailing a strange magic none of you can comprehend. If you ask her about it, she tells you what they're about with a sigh: Algebra.
  • In Final Fantasy XIV, the Ridorana Lighthouse has a boss named Construct 7, which tasks the players to solve a simple math problem or two. Get them right, and Bob's your uncle; get them wrong, and the resultant defense debuff means you'll be needing a revive momentarily. The notes scattered throughout imply that the previous explorers, er... didn't know their times tables very well.
  • Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass takes place in Jimmy's dream worlds, and the fourth world, Secret Meridian, represents Jimmy's struggles in school, particularly with math due to his dyslexia. Many of the enemies are Living Polyhedrons and Anthropomorphic Typography. In addition, the Symmetrical Cavern side dungeon has numbers on the cavern walls, and contains puzzles involving simple addition and subtraction; the Asymmetrical Cavern, meanwhile, resembles the Symmetrical Cavern but is much darker, with a purple color scheme, a chaotic soundtrack with digits randomly being said, a confusing layout and progression, and a boss that is made of several mathematical symbols and is one of the hardest fights in the game due to its Luck-Based Mission nature.
  • In Katawa Shoujo
    Miki: Screw math. It's boring as hell.
    • Miki is the most blunt about it, but no one else in the cast especially likes mathematics. Hisao's teacher Mutou prefers science, as does Hisao himself, Lilly's main interest is in English and Rin and Nomiya have a passion for art.
  • The talking teen Barbie is parodied in Kingdom of Loathing with the Apathetic Lizardman doll. "Math is kinda hard. But, y'know, it doesn't matter." Also in the "Hobopolis Zone," When you choose not to enter the Marketplace you get the message, "You don't feel like going shopping. Perhaps it's because you find math so easy."
  • In Life: the Game, if you fail at the 'study' level, it says that you hated math so much you quit school at age eight.
  • Made into a Running Gag in MadWorld with the announcers. Kreese Kreely is a Book Dumb commentator who always overreacts to the mere mention of anything to do with math.
    "Nobody said there'd be math!"
  • Talking to Chie on a certain night in Persona 4 will see math described in such terms as "my arch nemesis" and "Math is truly the enemy of mankind."
  • In PlanetSide 1, the Scorpion siege weapon system became a universal Scrappy Weapon because it required trigonometry to use; the player would aim somewhere, lock the detonation range, then aim it a few degrees above of their target, then fire the rocket so that it would detonate and rain shrapnel on the enemy. In practice, it would always overshoot, undershoot, or detonate too low or too high unless you used trigonometry.
  • A few Professor Layton puzzles can be solved by algebra instead of riddles (here's an example), but the hints point out it won't be fun and you should figure out the riddle instead. It is also a common trick for a puzzle to make algebra an immediate source of an answer, but make the real answer quickly found by wording snag. Other puzzles, however, do require mathematics to solve, such as trigonometry, calculating the area of a circle, and algebra.
  • Spiritfarer: In life, math wasn't Beverly's best subject because the numbers "made her brain spin".
  • Inverted in Tales of Symphonia. Zelos's only good subject is mathematics, despite the general impression that he is lazy and has no good subjects. (He freely admits that he graduated at the top of his class by having his harem attend lectures for him and pass the answers during tests.)
  • Thousand Arms has the "Math Book" as a gift toward the girls, many of whom are clearly not happy to accept it.
  • Aya of Touhou Project shows in Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red that, while Ran Yakumo may enjoy doing math in her spare time, not everyone in Gensokyo shares her enthusiasm for the subject.
    Ran: Here, an equation of a thousand expressions.
    Aya: Ack!
    Ran: And here is the proof.
    Aya: Ughhhhh.
  • A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky: After receiving Amos's Book of math, Ivy's face is not happy. Instead, she's neutral and speaks stiltedly, pausing after each ellipsis:
    Ivy: Thank you...for the gift...of math.
  • WarioWare Gold: 9-Volt hates math, but loves video games, so his "pet" Fronk explains that sometimes it's easier to tackle math when you break it down into something relatable (in this case, hit points/damage in an RPG). It's easier and more fun that way!
  • One of the random events in Wildermyth involves finding a magical puzzle box. The fact that the box uses words and riddles rather than numbers to unlock it raises a cheer from the heroes.
  • Inverted in The World Ends with You:
    • Sho Minamimoto has an obsession with math, he interjects mnemotechnic anagrams for the three basic trigonometric functions or the operation order into his dialogue and screams out this same trigonometric functions in battle.
    Some Old Horses Can Always Hear Their Owner Approach
    • Minamimoto's ultimate attack, a level i Flare, can hit anythingnote . Or it would, if Joshua hadn't sacrificed himself for Neku.

    Webcomics 

    Web Original 
  • The Geometric Simplification Act, which will reduce pi to 0 decimal places.
  • OneyNG's Algebra Aversion has Satan trying to help Leo do his homework... but the end result has him freaking out and damning Algebra.
  • Calculus was tough.
  • Maddox wrote an entire page spitting in the face of this mentality, explaining that mathematics is the reason that major scientific developments such as oil platforms, medicine, and space travel exist. This is explained by the fact that he has a degree in mathematics.
    "Why is math the only discipline that has to put up with this bullshit? People gladly learn art, music, literature and geography. You'll even nod like a happy idiot when you learn what a haiku is, and you never complain or whine about how you'll never use this in your "life." When is the last time you wrote a haiku, asshole?"
  • Bernadette Banner complains that pattern drafting involves “an unreasonable amount of math.”
  • If you go on Tumblr and browse the "mathematics" and "math" tags, chances are a good chunk of the posts will consist of users complaining about the latest math homework rather than mathematics itself.
  • Scootertrix the Abridged has an odd take on this. Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belles, and Scootaloo are prodigies and pre-teen graduates of a prestigious military academy. But when they're forced to attend grade school among other, ordinary kids, they react to questions like "6 + 2 = ?" as if they're impenetrable witchcraft. Though it doesn't help that their teacher, Cheerilee, spends the whole class barking questions at random and yelling at anyone who gets the answer wrong.
  • An episode of Stickfigures on Crack shows someone literally being bored to death by an Edu Tainment show on math (of course, all the host says is "Two plus Two is Fourrrr!" in a silly voice ad infiniutm).
  • Possibly Adverted in Tankmen when they are running for their lives and challenge their enemy to a game of shoot between the buildings. When they miss one of the tankmen pop up behind them and declare "Should have used the Pythagorean Theorem, Bitch" and proceeds to attack.
  • At Whateley Academy in the Whateley Universe, math is Tennyo's worst subject. She dreads her genius brother finding out. On the other hand, Phase is a freshman and is taking trigonometry with the juniors and seniors. And there are the Mad Scientist types who have already placed out of all high school math. Also, Carmilla created a theory of mutant powers based on post-doctorate level mathematics. (Of course, this one's kind of justified by her having already had an not entirely uneventful adult human life before turning into what she is now. Adding the superhuman processing power of her new form to that can't have hurt.)
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series, Joey derides math, then has trouble subtracting attack points from defense points. As Tea puts it: "It's official; you're an idiot."

    Western Animation 
  • Arthur: "Sue Ellen Adds it Up" opens with Sue Ellen explaining that she and her parents don't care for math and use estimation and trial and error in situations which call for measuring. Prunella gives Sue Ellen a hard time about not incorporating math into her life, but helps her when she needs to alter her plans for displaying her art project.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender: During one of Aang's pre-invasion nightmares, he must... take a math test he didn't study for! The horror!
  • In Batman: The Animated Series, Barbara has to study for her mid-term exams and laments: "(sigh) Math. Why did it have to be math?" So she decides to suit-up as Batgirl and fight crime instead.
  • Beavis And Butthead, not surprisingly. Not only are they unable to do algebra, but they can't do any sort of math 99% percent of the time, even if chicks, money and nachos are involved. At one point, a teacher asked them what two plus two was. They were unable to answer.
    Butthead: I'm, like, angry at numbers.
    Beavis: Yeah! There's, like, too many of them and stuff.
  • Central Park: Cole has trouble in his geometry class and keeps getting D's on his homework and he sings "I'm Bad (At Being Bad)" to express his frustration. Owen and Paige helps him with it when they point out that he's using geometry when controlling a model sailboat by using angles when making the boat turn.
  • In Danny Phantom, this is the main hero's worst subject in school. Especially problematic since his goal is to work for NASA/become an astronaut.
  • Daria: Math, Jane Lane's least favorite and worst subject ever.
  • The edutainment short Donald in Mathmagic Land plays this straight at the beginning, when Donald insists that math is for "eggheads". The Spirit of Adventure manages to convince him otherwise, by showing him how mathematics influences things like music theory ("Without 'eggheads', there would be no music!") and even parlor games.
  • In one episode of Fairly OddParents, when Timmy is asked to write the answer to 2+2 on the board, he calculates it as equaling 5. Just as Mr. Crocker is about to mock him for it, Stephen Hawking shows up (due to Remy Buxaplenty hiring him to prove Timmy write to earn his trust) and writes a proof explaining that 2+2 can equal 5. In The Stinger, Mr. Crocker has found out that 2+2 actually equals 6, but he gets incinerated into bits by Stephen Hawking's jetpack wheelchair.
  • From A To Z-Z-Z-Z: Ralph has to solve a math problem in class, but can't. He then imagines the numbers laughing at him and fights back at them.
  • A Futurama episode plot involves a mind switching device that could only switch minds that haven't been switched before. Amy and the Professor try it first, but realize they can't switch back directly (since Amy and the Professor's minds have already been switched). In trying to figure out if they can switch back to their proper bodies with 4 or more bodies, the Professor announces that they'll have to use math to figure it out. Cue ominous music plays.
    • Episode writer Ken Keeler, who has a PhD in applied mathematics, penned and proved a theorem based on group theory solely for the purpose of resolving the twist in this episode. This proof appears on the blackboard in the episode.
  • In The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy episode "Substitute Teacher" Billy brings Grim to school to help him pass his math test. Later, he asks him for answers and Grim replies that he doesn't know any math and that he informed him it was a history test and Billy replies "What's math?", and we later see for one of his answers he drew a picture of a clown with a flame thrower.
  • Kaeloo: Stumpy hates math more than any other subject and has difficulty counting higher than the number four.
  • Applejack of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic accuses Big Macintosh of "using yer fancy mathematics to muddy the issue" in "Applebuck Season", when he tried to convince her "one pony plus hundreds of apple trees just doesn't add up" and that she should find someone else to help with the harvest instead of going it on her own. In "Suited for Success", she also has an apparent bit of difficulty counting to six.
  • Nate Is Late: In "The Kid from the Future", Nate and Malika travel into a portal to the future and see what their school is like. To their horror, it has very strict rules, robots are drilling the kids in math around the clock and every student is given a clock that showcases how many hours of detention a student has. Detention itself? Being stuck on an exercise bike and forced to solve math problems, with every wrong problem making the bike go faster. Gets even more ludicrous when they start throwing in algebra and arithmetic into the mix.
  • In the The Powerpuff Girls (1998) episode "Him Diddle Riddle", Bubbles claims she hates math; this is contradicted in a later episode where she claims she likes it (but Buttercup does not). Buttercup tests into Honors Math in the reboot, though.
  • Star vs. the Forces of Evil: Star really doesn't like Miss Skullnick's math class, but in "Mathmagic" her stubborn refusal to try and solve a math problem nearly causes a catastrophic Temporal Paradox.
  • In Wakfu, Tristepin cannot count past two.

    Real Life 
  • In England you pick four or five (usually four) A Levels to study at 16, as opposed to maths being compulsory in some form until age 18 as in America. As a result 90% of kids take no more maths qualifications and leave education with a standard of maths that is (by international standards) simply woeful. A Level Maths is accepted as equivalent to AP credit at many American universities. An A Level maths student is therefore a 16 year old taking college level courses in calculus and physics. GCSE Maths (school leaving exams), however, top out at Pythagoras, simple quadratic equations and equation of a line.
  • In Scotland, in the 1980s at least, the exams taken at 15/16 split mathematics into two subjects — Arithmetic and Mathematics. Mathematics was also one of two subjects (with English) that was streamed, with students sorted into classes by ability at age 12/13. While some form of mathematics was mandatory, students who were in the lower ability classes were able to leave high school having only done Arithmetic, which had a focus towards the sort of practical mathematics that were needed on a day to day basis, such as the skills needed to budget, or calculate loan payments. Algebra and calculus were in the Mathematics syllabus, so students who were less mathematically inclined were able to avoid them completely and, since most of those students tended to leave school at age 16, they were considered to have been taught what they would need in daily life.
  • In the US, the math:no-math split is simply pushed back a few years. The math portion of the general GRE (the exam taken by all applicants to graduate school, regardless of field) is objectively easier than the math portion of the SAT (taken by college applicants in their last year of high school), because it is assumed that students have had no mathematics in the last four years.
  • Stephen Hawking was advised by his editor that every equation in a book cuts the sales in half, so he included only one in A Brief History Of Time.
  • This is true of sufferers of the learning disability dyscalculia, which can easily be described as "dyslexia with numbers."
  • There's a joke among snipers that a lot of people join sniper school because how awesome being a Cold Sniper seems... then drop out when they find out the sheer complexity of the math involved.
  • MATHCOUNTS (basically the math equivalent of the National Spelling Bee) is aimed at averting this through competition.
  • Isaac Asimov once wrote in an editorial that the reason so many women are becoming lawyers — as opposed to doctors, engineers and so on — is that it is the only high-powered profession that requires no mathematics. He was promptly flooded with letters from irate lawyers claiming that they do, too, have to do math: they have to calculate billable hours, and figure taxes, and .... Asimov replied, in effect, "I rest my case". It is very common for people in all walks of life to equate mathematics with arithmetic.
  • Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant once said, "It's hard to rally around a math class."
  • An economist was mistaken for a terrorist for the terribly suspicious crime of...doing math.
  • Raymond Smullyan, a mathematician best known for his logic puzzle books, told an amusing anecdote in the preface to The Lady or the Tiger? about a ten-year-old boy who loved his logic puzzles so much that he sent him an original puzzle he had made himself. Smullyan called the boy to compliment him on his puzzle and the boy's father whispered to him, "When you speak to him, don't let him know that what he is doing is math, because he hates math! If he had any idea that this is really math, he would stop reading your books immediately!" Smullyan concluded that the best way to cure people's hatred of math might be to rewrite math books in the form of puzzle books.

Alternative Title(s): Everyone Hates Mathematics, Everybody Hates Math, Everyone Hates Math, Math Class Is Tough

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