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Numbers...

Algebra was nearly impossible for me, by far the worst.

And then of course there is calculus! :)

When I was in school I would try to avoid maths as much as possible as well, both because I thought it was extremely boring and because I also struggled with it. I preferred subjects like history, English and so on, but then when I went to college I selected the subject of physics and it turned out to be ridiculously easy for some reason. Maybe it was because I had a really good teacher. Okay, maybe not "ridiculously" easy, but it was much easier than I expected it to be, and I passed all of the tests that were set, even the ones I had not studied for.

Anyway, I am now much better at it because, among other things, I realise how important it is to understand (especially statistics - it's used all the time), and I have been pushing myself to come to an understanding of it, and the very first step in this process was to overcome the irrational belief that, as so many have convinced themselves, it is too difficult to really grasp. So many people are actually afraid of it, but what's the worst thing that can happen? The worst thing that can happen is that you will end up not understanding a specific problem properly, and will get a wrong answer as a result. If that happens, you just try again. Simple :)
 
I see a lot of things talking about Aspie people being generally great at math and with numbers.

For me I can remember phone numbers, dates etc. Very well, but I have extreme anxiety with math. I've always struggled with it, though the more straight forward math isn't as bad, I can't seem to hold mathematical Numbers in my head even for a small amount of time. Algebra was nearly impossible for me, by far the worst. X.x

Does anyone else here have extreme difficulty in math?
I'm fantastic at lower-level maths, business math, and math related to science. All of the maths that have a theoretical component too them, like imaginary numbers or intersecting planes through graphs, don't make any sense at all. I thought it would be more common for people with Asperger's to not understand these because they aren't straightforward or completely logical. As long as it's math representing a physical idea, it's doable.
 
I'm the opposite; I'm a great mathematician, but I can't for the life of me remember phone numbers and I often forget my own birthday.
Same. Great at mat, but not memeerisation.

Mathmaticle ability is not intrinsic to autism, but those who are good are gifted. Their brains are wired in such a way that is different than others in order to be highly proficient.

Me, I do be live I hold a great potential, but I am held back by my in abilities by my lack of motivation to put in the work. I hope to be able to taper into my abilities. I need to re learn even the simple stuff like algebra to have a good foundation for the more advanced stuff.

Who knows? School is a bad institution for knowing if you are really good at the stuff being taught. If you find a good way to learn that works off of your strong points, you could really be a genius tricked into believing that you are not. School sucks because it teaches with a system that says you are not smart if you are not good at that way of learning, not actual abilities, only the ability to learn through the system.

"It's a miracle curiosity survives formal education."
-Enstein
 
I see a lot of things talking about Aspie people being generally great at math and with numbers.

For me I can remember phone numbers, dates etc. Very well, but I have extreme anxiety with math. I've always struggled with it, though the more straight forward math isn't as bad, I can't seem to hold mathematical Numbers in my head even for a small amount of time. Algebra was nearly impossible for me, by far the worst. X.x

Does anyone else here have extreme difficulty in math?


I'm pretty good at math, but algebra was hard. I think I have a bit of dyslexia, but have not been diagnosed with it. I would miss seeing exponents, and often some variables so it took me a long time to get through algebra. Other than that I'm pretty good at math especially geometry, and trigonomettry. I can't remember dates, and phone numbers to save my life! I can't even remember my own sons birthday, I keep it written on a card in my wallet so I can remember it when it gets close.
 
I do not love numbers. I love symbols a+b is more meaningful to me than 2+1 can ever be. I really want to study abstract algebra more. It is sexy.

I made couple of suprising proofs while I was studying at uni (I wanted to even make a new approach to topology but the mathematician got scared of my suggestion). Because my thinking is top down instead of bottom up I really made mathematicians scratch their heads. Those guys are very bottom up. I do not like discrete math. I like continuing graphs more than purity.
 
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Since Albert Einstein was on the autism spectrum, I had a few months ago put together a video about how Einstein had thought in numbers and how his thought process allowed him to use numbers to understand how our universe works in this video content from my YouTube channel "Aspie With Attitude".

 
I see a lot of things talking about Aspie people being generally great at math and with numbers.

For me I can remember phone numbers, dates etc. Very well, but I have extreme anxiety with math. I've always struggled with it, though the more straight forward math isn't as bad, I can't seem to hold mathematical Numbers in my head even for a small amount of time. Algebra was nearly impossible for me, by far the worst. X.x

Does anyone else here have extreme difficulty in math?

I fit your generalization of Aspies, but do not think all Aspies are great in math.
 
Thought I'd chime in here. Besides I haven't posted here in a long while :)

When I look at a page of numbers or equations, my eyes slide off the page; there's no starting point.

I experience exactly the same phenomenon with poetry, and, thanks to the internet, a "wall of text". I have tried very hard over the years, I just can't do math or poetry.

It's like my eyes have their own little panic attack!
I can fully relate to that with history. I could never understand the context of historical events. The worst is when I'm asked to synthesize information. "If this historical figure were in this situation, what would he do?" kind of questions. Like you, I've tried very hard but I have to read so much into things that it's exhausting, and I still don't retain it for any longer than I need to. Despite my best efforts in college, I could only get, like, 65% in history classes.

But with numbers, I kind of fall in the middle of the number spectrum I guess. I am okay at remembering phone numbers, dates etc. so long as my brain can find a good reason for remembering them. For instance, my own phone number, and the phone numbers of my family and closest friends, I remember well, though sometimes I remember their old phone numbers better than their current ones. Even though I have a smartphone, I'm so used to dialing phone numbers. If a number changes, I can often put it to memory if I make a conscious effort to do it, and by that point I'm too lazy to update/add them to my phone haha. But birthdays were never a huge deal, I mean we celebrate them but we don't do anything extravagant. So I sometimes forget them.

When I was a kid I loved simple mental math. In fact I was so perplexed by the vertical method of adding/subtracting numbers right to left that I mentally taught myself how to do it from left to right by imagining a number line grid and counting on that instead. I got a lot of stuff wrong at first and was often asked if I actually understood what I was doing, but by the time we were moving on to more advanced stuff, I was good enough at my mental way that I could get better grades than my class, and my brain didn't feel like jello when I was done. Multiplication/division was harder, but if I remember right I also tried to come up with mental tricks for those. They weren't as effective though.

The hard part of algebra for me was figuring out which steps to perform when. The abstractness of it got to me. Once I figured out what to do though, my mental math would take over and I'd actually at least somewhat enjoy solving the problem. This was such an obvious thing that even my math teachers noticed it, but it didn't save me all the time. One time I got a C on a test, and when going over it with me, the teacher told me that she didn't think a C was a reflection of my abilities. She knew I was really good with mental math and she could guess why I made the mistakes I made, but because I didn't show my work, she couldn't be sure and thus couldn't give me partial credit, which would've brought my grade up significantly.

Even now I use simple math a lot as my special interests lie in music technology, which can often have strong mathematical ties. I'm not deep into it though, I'm not working with logs and exponents often. To be honest I'm finding myself using a calculator more and more, especially when I have easy access to one, because the novelty of doing things in my head is wearing off.

Sometimes when working through an interesting task, I get to the point where I know that what I'm doing is working, but I lose perspective and context i.e. I know each step is required and I know it gives me something I need, but I forget what that is and why it works. This is beyond frustrating when trying to explain how I do things to people who don't know much about it, or when trying to learn a new formula which is too heavy on abstract concepts. It's one of those classic aspie dilemmas I suppose.
 
Canada has 9.2 million baby boomers. in 13 years, half of them will have passed away or 4.6 million No wonder we are in such a hurry to bring in immigrants.
 

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I own some property in a small town 800 residents of which 600 are over 65 years interesting in the next few years
many of these residents will have passed.
 
I see a lot of things talking about Aspie people being generally great at math and with numbers.

For me I can remember phone numbers, dates etc. Very well, but I have extreme anxiety with math. I've always struggled with it, though the more straight forward math isn't as bad, I can't seem to hold mathematical Numbers in my head even for a small amount of time. Algebra was nearly impossible for me, by far the worst. X.x

Does anyone else here have extreme difficulty in math?

Don't be fooled by the stereotypes, not everyone with autism is brilliant at math nor must they have a photographic memory. I'm pretty much like you; I get overwhelmed by the amount of junk in the equation, and it's too much to hold in my head all at once. I can write software that is tremendously layered across megabytes of source code, but that's only because you don't have to hold the entire thing in your head. It's like a network I traverse in my head. Math kills me because you have to hold a complex and extremely abstract phrase in your head all at once, and if you get a parenthesis or order-of-operations wrong, you have to start over, and there's like a dozen opportunities to mess that up even in a simple equation. I get sick of chess for the same reason. It's so easy to read the board wrong, and that's the worst way to lose.
 
I'm having fun talking to my wife about how us babu boomers are starting to die with increasing frequency and how it's going to effect our kids and grandkids realized our brethren south of us are in the same boat. In control systems
lag times are important.
 

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