I think that the ability to teach Math well may be abnormal, but the ability to do it well is most usually the result of bad teaching.

For some reason the East Europeans are really good at Math and the teaching of it. This is borne out by statistics, and all I can put it down to is tradition, because they are not so very different from anyone else in other ways. Every outstanding teacher of Math I have had has been from the east of Europe - Cerkeliunas and Wyszecki. The rest were dross.

I was nothing much above normal in Math at school, but under the enlightened later tutelage of those two giants I learned enough to take the subject into my own hands, and then finished a badly taught Physics degree by being able to work out the Math when nothing else was capable of being reasoned out of the gibberish taught. Similarly when doing a Control Systems MSc, I was able to swim through the treacle presented because I knew that it must be possible to do so, whilst half the intake could not remotely cope, and failed the degree.

But I've been able to get others through often enough myself. The key is that people's minds work differently, and they respond to one to one tuition - as far as I can see. I've got people who are Math averse through exams before now, and I really do think that the issue is mainly with the teaching, and not with the learners.

Teaching Math is in crisis in the western world, and standards are plummeting. We aren't getting stupider. We're being taught worse.