It’s extraordinary what a badge of honour it is in our culture to declare: “I’m terrible at maths. I just don’t have the brain for it.”

You’d never get someone in India or China confessing to such a thing. Maths is regarded in such high esteem that admitting you can’t do it is akin to announcing you’re illiterate, something no one in the west would happily own up to.

So how come so many people seem quite happy to declare their inability to do mathematics?

Is it true that some people just don’t have the brains to do maths? Or can anyone who puts in enough hours become a maths genius? What about this condition dyscalculia, a learning difficulty for arithmetic? Are some brains badly wired for numeracy? Is being bad at maths all in the mind? How can you overcome a fear of the subject and make maths your friend? What exactly is maths anyway?

We’re all mathematicians – even if we don’t realise it

It’s important to realise that mathematics is so much more than arithmetic. You might have trouble with your multiplication tables but actually be a great mathematician. Indeed I believe we have all evolved to be good at mathematics as a species because, ultimately, maths is about understanding patterns.

It’s those who are good at maths who are likely to survive the urban jungle of the modern world

When we were faced with the chaos of the jungle, those who negotiated the environment best were those who had brains able to detect patterns.

If you saw something symmetrical, it was likely to be the face of an animal, and either you could eat it or it could eat you. Either way, those sensitive to symmetry survived.

Similarly, humans with a good sense of numbers could tell whether their tribe was outnumbered or not, which would inform the decision to fight or flee. And by spotting a pattern in the past, you could predict what might happen next.

Those who were good at maths became our ancestors, because they were the ones who survived. And those who are good at maths today will survive the urban jungle of the modern world, because they have the best tools to plan for the future.

What is dyscalculia?

We have recently recognised a condition in the brain called dyscalculia, which is for numbers what dyslexia is for words. It’s a learning difficulty that makes it difficult to process numbers and perform arithmetical tasks.

I feared that when this condition was more widely acknowledged, half the nation would declare itself dyscalculic. This would do a disservice to those who have the condition. It’s thought that about 5% of the population may have some degree of dyscalculia. It shouldn’t be used as a cover for bad education – or for psychological handicaps caused by lack of confidence.

Even for those who have dyscalculia, it’s important to remember that mathematics is not simply sums. Just as someone with dyslexia can become a great novelist, there are many bits of the mathematical universe that don’t need a facility for arithmetic.

You can come up with an algorithm to manipulate numbers without being able to do the calculations yourself. That’s because constructing an algorithm is about understanding the logic underpinning how numbers work – it’s an abstract skill.

Believing that you will be able to reach your destination is crucial

I wasn’t very good at multiplication tables at school because I didn’t like things that consisted of rote learning. It was when things became more abstract that I discovered mathematics was the subject for me.

Believing you can do it is half the battle

Your mindset is key to doing mathematics. I spend half of my time with my PhD students managing their psychological state of mind. It’s scary striking out into the unknown. They are trying to solve problems that no one knows the answer to. Believing that you will be able to reach your destination is crucial.

This applies even to the mathematics we learn at school and university. You see students at all levels hit walls. But it’s about finding strategies to overcome those psychological barriers. Students seeing ideas for the first time can be like rabbits in the headlights. They freeze and can’t move. I’m sure the neurological activity activated by fear can interfere with our ability to think through problems logically.

That’s why it’s important to consider redoing years in mathematics rather than cracking on to the next bit of the curriculum. Mathematics is like building a logical pyramid – one shaky layer and everything built on top is likely to come crashing down. But often a subject that seemed impossible at first suddenly starts clicking into place when you come back to it for the second time.

Mathematics is entirely logical. There are no mysterious magical ingredients or tricks involved.

Strategies for dialing up your mathematical mind

Doing mathematics is a bit like playing sport or learning a musical instrument. You can’t do it well immediately – it requires practice. Think of having a mathematical muscle in your mind that with practice gradually gets stronger.

Mathematics is everywhere, so whatever you enjoy doing you might find interesting mathematics bubbling underneath. A sudoku puzzle is about mathematical logic, not arithmetic. Music is full of mathematics. Rhythm is about exploring the way different numbers interact. Theme and variation exploits ideas of symmetry. Architecture and the visual arts are built out of the possibilities that geometry has to offer. Even a poem might have a pattern that can spark a mathematical thought.

Mathematics is a very human pursuit and has a history. Learning about how the Indians created the number zero, or the ancient Egyptians came up with a formula to calculate the volumes of the pyramids they were building, might tickle the mathematical brain cells waiting to light up.

Mathematics is the language of the universe and it’s one we can all learn to speak.

Marcus du Sautoy is the Simonyi professor for the public understanding of science and professor of mathematics at the University of Oxford. His new book, out in May, is called What We Cannot Know (Fourth Estate).

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