“They presume that, if the math is not coming easy, that therefore you’ll never learn it, and I meant it literally that math is the language of the universe and it’s like any other language, especially a language that does not share the Roman alphabet. So, for example, if you wanted to study chinese it looks completely intractable, at first.
And so, and you could ask the question, “How long does it take one to become fluent in Chinese if you are not Chinese, yourself?”
And so, it can take years and five years, almost 10 years if you never go to China. You go to China for maybe five years of intensive exposure and you’ve never done that with math. Imagine that level of exposure to math. What kind of fluency you will have at the other end of that pipeline?
So, at least give yourself the opportunity that any person learning a foreign language would give themselves, before you turn around and say you’re not good at math.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson
