In Reply to: What is normal? posted by Stats Nerd on November 06, 2006 at 10:20:34:
The old IQ test is not taken seriously by those who understand what it does. It does not measure intelligence but certain aspects of memory and knowledge. That's what your comment on mathematics reminds me of. To be good at one thing doesn't imply that you cannot excel at something else. Not to excel on something doesn't mean some sort of incapacity. Everybody runs into mental blocks. Every person has some areas in which we just don't function as well as others. Does that makes you or me imperfect or abnormal? I don't think so.
Everybody is intelligent in something, may people think of autistic children as handicapped, and some of them don't function well on social settings but master some astonishingly difficult skills.
I am afraid to think that persistance is everybody and everything recipe to master whatever. While it sounds well as a motto, the reality is different and not everybody had the physical or mental capacity to excel. The most we can ask of others or of ourselves is to do the best we can, and that is a subjective measure. Only I and my God are able to know whether I am doing my best or not.
In your case, about math, in my mind the most probably reason of your early problems was the method used to teach it to you.
Howard Gardner wrote a couple of interesting books on multiple intelligences, one in 1993 and another one more recently. The original one is called "Frames of Mind". I am not sure about the name of the most recent but I think it is "Multiple Intelligences, something something". The basic idea is that everybody is very good at "something"that is no standard, and the measurement of intelligence must be done only within that "something". For instance, one thing is mechanical (spatial) intelligence and another is verbal intelligence, and yet another is musical, etc.