I memorized my way through all kinds of math in high school. I was in my thirties before I knew some of those formulas had practical applications. I knew my oldest son couldn't memorize his way through math. So I taught a conceptual approach. It was the math concepts I retained anyway. When I went back to school, knowing the concepts stood me in good stead. Looking up what all the little squiggles meant and refamiliarizing myself with some of the formulas quickly got me up to speed. I was waivered into my statistics class based on my 17 year old SAT scores because I had never taken college algebra. I ended up with the highest grade in the class and explained a lot to my classmates. So I made sure my son knew the concepts, even though he is terrible at dealing with numbers. It worked beautifully.

How it's taught can make a big difference.