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Comment by omixi | Hacker News Reader

The key difference that's being overlooked between math teachers and football coaches are the populations they are working with. Football teams consist of competitive kids that WANT to play the sport and perform well (win). On the other hand most math classrooms consist of kids that HAVE to be there against their will, regardless of their interest in math.

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I have to confess I haven't read the article. My first thought though was this would work only if the participants in Maths lessons are as keen as football players. Football(rugby in my case) is fun, even now as a middle-aged man I have vivid memories of playing rugby but hardly any memories cracking hard maths problems. I was motivated to play sport, it was fun. Maths was fun but not to the same level as a sport.

Casual phone games have more mathematics involved than people appreciate. Even if that involves figuring out that you will die before completing the game unless you pay for it.

But, regardless of their merits, casual games are insanely popular for various reasons.

And not just casual games. All sorts of games involve mathematics.

That may not be your case, but a lot of people have fond memories playing SimCity or min-maxing their paladin.

I wonder what's the relationship with Simcity with Math? It's just a game with building keep growing and some random disaster.

Budgeting. Tax rates. Growth rates. Density. Efficiency. Geometry in the planning.

Most can intuitively guess and check to some success, but there is a ton of math involved even if most players don't bother to formalize it.

Thanks for your response. Certainly gave me a different perspective. More so because I am not a gamer. Not sure why but I never caught the gaming bug but most people I went to college with dabbled in games.

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