How many people believe Einstein was bad at mathematics?

I don't.

Well they aren't going to admit it if you point out it's a misconception, now will they?

Edit: Baseless personal accusations of dishonesty net you -1 Internets. Fact is people don't want to give a poor image of themselves and will find themselves less motivated to answer a question where they will appear poorly.

Edit 2: This really sinks below even trolling level all the way down to Dunning-Kruger. The drive to present oneself in a good manner was one of the major findings of 20th century psychology. When for example I ask Christians questions where any answer they give makes them look bad, there predictably are less Christian answers. You have failed both on honesty and the facts.

Poor is a relative term in this case. By other theoretical physicists' standards he was not that good, but adequate to the task. He was prbably well beyond anyone here. His reasoning and creativity in the field were probably second to none.

There were stories about him not being able to balance his checkbook while in the US. They may be true since so many people did not cash his checks preferring to have the check itself with his signature.

If he created general relativity, he obviously was very good with mathematics. However, he was bad with arithmetic. Einstein's bus driver claimed that he had a hard time making change for a bus fare. He also admitted that he didn't really understand tensor calculus that well.

Never heard any such idea before. My own view is that Albert Einstein was a Genius of the Mathematical kind - probably, but not quite, on a par with Archimedes of Syracuse. But we'll never know for sure who is the greatest.

R = 02 i k. . .

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=albert+einstein&...

Is Albert about to write "I know. . . ." hmm

No, Albert may have been a dunce at some things, but when it came to sums he was way ahead of anyone else. As far as I know no one has yet managed to decipher his thousands of scribbled notes in the thousands of note books which he kept thus to stop his brain clogging up.

London UK 091113.0652GMT

Clearly, he was astoundingly good at math. I have been told the story, however, that he failed a grade-school math course, which is not quite the same thing as being bad at math, after all.

How could you be a physicist, let alone one like Einstein, and not be able to be at least adequate at math-that makes absolutely no sense!

Mathematics wasn't his discipline but he learnt alot of different strands of maths to help him formulate his theories. Non-Euclidean geometry of Lobachevsky and Minkowski spacetime are two examples

Einstein's Catholic education propelled him to excel in mathematics. He was very gifted.

Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom--Albert Einstein

http://exlaodicea.wordpress.com/2008/01/30/einstei...

I've always read or heard that Einstein's teachers thought he was a poor student and had few prospects.

it is my understanding that he was poor at math in school, but since he uses calculus in his analyses, he got better sometime.