John;<br><br>thanks for your insight. I have read a number of books on math and math teaching. One book that I though highly of is "Math Power" by Patricia Kenschaft (ISBN 0201772892), although it seems to be out of print now. She points out that all kids love to count things when they're little; somehow, the school manages to take counting (which is fun) and turn it into "math" (which most people hate). <br><br>A while ago, I arranged a "puzzles night" in my division, putting groups together and giving them math puzzles to solve. This made it a social activity, where they could brainstorm together and come up with a collective solution. I was quite surprised by how successful this was - I thought they'd get bored after solving the first problem and want to do something else, but they actually asked for more.<br><br>The biggest problem with the way math is taught in schools, IMO, is that it's turned into a boring, frustrating, solitary activity. You sit down at your desk and stay there until you come up with the correct answer. Whereas in real life, you would get up, go for coffee, talk to your co-workers, see if they had any insight into the problem - maybe a couple of you would get together and brainstorm a little bit. If my boss told me I had twenty problems to solve by 4 o'clock, and I wasn't allowed to go for a coffee break or discuss them with my colleagues, I'd laugh in his face. Yet that's how we expect kids to learn math. It's insane, IMO.<br><br>Like you, I can trace my love of math back to my second year in high school, or possibly my last year of junior high. I was fortunate enough to have a really good math teacher that year, who for whatever reason or through whatever brand of sorcery made me realize that math was something I was actually good at. I had always enjoyed doing puzzles before that, it was probably in high school that I came to the realization that those puzzles were actually math problems (in a flimsy disguise :-)