http://www.linkedin.com/e/ktxpr5-gxxf7bwb-45/vaq/32237027/33207/66199033/view_disc/?hs=false&tok=0jRlkJmW2mFl41

Commenter Syreeta Charles-Cole shares my feeling that it has a lot to do with “the right or wrong nature of the subject” and I added the following:

I think Syreeta has identified an important point about the right-wrong aspect but that the reason its a problem specific to mathematics needs more elaboration.

Other subjects all have a share of the right-wrong business, but in those cases it is mostly confined to memorizable facts which most people seem to be more comfortable with. Memorization may be boring, but most people aren’t offended when they get it wrong – perhaps because they can always imagine that with enough effort they’d be able to get it right. Reasoning on the other hand in other subjects seems to be expected to allow for endless dispute and negotiation, and there seems to be a real sense of offense at being found absolutely wrong. In those subjects anyone who has done the memory work can weasel and waffle their way out of any apparent reasoning error, but in mathematics this is not the case. No matter how much we study there is always the possibility of being exposed as just plain wrong, again, and again, and again.

The problem is exacerbated by teachers who are themselves unsure of their grasp of the subject and (perhaps as a result of their own insecurity) apply an even more rigidly dogmatic approach to the subject than it really warrants. (One of my pet peeves in this regard is the failure to distinguish between actual mathematical facts themselves and the choices of convention and definition in terms of which we express them.)