How can someone with AS be good at math/spatial issues?

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Yeah I have great spelling, great vocabulary, great grammar, pretty good writing, but those things aren't really valued by employers the way math and technical skills are.

I'm curious as to how ANYONE can be good at math.

I'm reaaaaly good at math and spacial thinking. It comes so easy for me, it's partially why I'd like to be a physicist. (particle physics and interest in cosmology).

I am however really horrible in languages. I learn by phrases and context, not by rules. My English is mostly based on movies/series. Any sentence I make is not done using grammatical rules but examples from films or so (it's hard to explain). I find it really hard to learn grammatical/spelling rules because most of them are so very illogical.


edit for spelling (thank you FF spell correct)

I'm an English major and I don't have much use for grammar/spelling rules either.

They're arbitrary and rarely consistent.

Hooray for mathy people! You both enchant and mystify me.

I know that was a rhetorical question, but I'm going to answer it anyway.

My guess is that the part of my brain that was supposed to be used for social interactions somehow got used for math and logic instead.

Hey now, stop thinking what I'm thinking!

I agree, they are not the same ability, sorry, it's my opinion too.


This makes sense to me. I struggle with more symbolic math, but understand well the simpler forms, let them be symbolic. I can understand well the logic behind basic physical laws, the dimensions, and can 'see' in my mind these rules working.

Well, Einstein was admittedly not very good at maths, and had difficulties to summarize his thoughts of his relativity theory, spent 10 years with thinking until he could come up with the general version after the special. Lorentz (Lorentz-transformation), Maxwell (equations explaining electromagnetic waves) were better at mathematics.

I agree. I don't have good spatial skills (I must practice to have better), but have good visual skills in physics and maths.

unfortunatly i am a stereotypical aspie i have skipped 3 grades in math and im shy.

How can someone be a savant in science?


May be a very advanced form of echolalia.

Personnaly I suck at elementary school math (It have take me year to get long division) and those basic calculation, but I was very good when they allowed calculators in middle and high school, somtime getting perfect scores.
Algebra and Pythagor? That's easy. But don't ask me to do calculations by hand, I make too many errors.


I think it may be my case, likelly less extreme though.

I used to be bad at math when I was real little. Then in second grade, my teacher gave me the tables of the calculations for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division for numbers 1 thru 10. I memorized them to the point they came automatically. My problems with math vanished almost overnight. Straight A's after that. However in history and english and other social studies classes I was horrible. I am very good at spelling as well.


Actually, I can't understand why people are so bad at math. It is so simple.

It's a bit misleading to say that Einstein was not good at math. He actually was better at math than most people. He just wasn't a great mathematician. A lot of the mathematics that was needed for General Relativity was fairly esoteric stuff, much more advanced than Maxwell or Lorentz needed. Hilbert, a top mathematician, actually developed much of the mathematics for General Relativity, but Einstein took Hilbert's mathematics and made a coherent theory out of it.

'Not very good', I wrote. I know I should know more about these things and physics, after all I'm only a fr..ing economist. And if you ask about economics, I will know little about it, either. I'd like to encourage here everybody with strange, extraordinary ideas and relatively less thorough knowledge on the specific field to be like him, get himself/herself together, and have the courage to achieve his/her dream. John Nash is also a good example, and he is a mathematician/economist.

People with autism can have a mix of different skills and weaknesses.

I'm artistic but my spatial skills need some work. My artistic ability is limited because I really need to see the object in front of me to draw it or I know it from rote memorisation. Actually I can memorise in less than three tries so that is something. But drawing 3-d objects correctly takes some time.

My math skills are all over the place. I'm good at geometry, algebra and basic physics.

I have a poor math memory though. I can re-learn above 6th grade level math all I want but it won't stick. Actually on a high dose of Ritalin I got really good at grade 10-12 math and physics but that dose almost killed me.

I've been a visual thinker for most of my life. I only knew how to draw and struggled with reading, structuring sentences, comprehending verbal information and remembering it. Don't even get me started on communication skills. My world has always been a vividly visual one.

If I was to have one savant skill it would be find-a-words. I know it's not a proper savant skill but I am faster than light when I do a find-a-word. Actually I'm the fastest when surrounded by crowds and noise. I just block them out and forget where I am. I wonder if that has anything to do with spatial skills? Not the blocking out - the ability to find hidden words in such a small amount of time.

I hate that character on Parenthood.

I'm good at math. Not a savant but better than average. I grasp mathematical concepts from the barest amount of instruction. I actually learn it better if I teach myself. My problem isn't math but my executive dysfunction that makes me rush through steps and do sloppy work. But I can figure out I did wrong. I understand the concepts. Just doing repeated exercises in school was boring and frustrating.

My spatial intelligence in very good too. I heart patterns. In testing, my strongest area is verbal thinking, with logical and spatial competing for second place.

I excel at abstract thinking. This is in part why I think having Asperger's is different from HFA. I recently saw the Ingenious Minds episode with Temple Grandin where she explains her inability to think abstractly. I am very different from her in this regard. Thinking abstractly as a very young kid was challenging--like trying to imagine fiction characters without a picture--but I overcame it very early on. At 9 I taught myself how to read music with just a songbook and a cheap electric piano. It didn't take me very long, actually, to figure out how the symbols on the page related to the keys on the piano, and how that related to a melody. I didn't know a quarter note or a 4/4 time meter was called that until I was formally enrolled in band at school and they taught me that, but I had figured out quite easily what those symbols represented. That's proof that any deficit in abstract thinking I had at 5, I overcame or was in the process of overcoming by 9. Further more, this has been one of the areas I've been most talented--while i didn't have much interest in math, I did in music and philosophy and I excelled academically in both those areas. When learning new things I prefer hands-on experience rather than verbal instruction, but most of my thinking is verbal, abstract and logical, while Temple says her thinking in visual (in pictures) and associative. Temple claims she has always struggled with abstract thinking--clearly there's a difference of how my brain works compared to hers. Yet, we do both have the same social deficits and our info-oriented communication styles are very similar.

I do think being able to think abstractly factors into how well you can do math. Clearly, as Temple shows, abstract thinking is very challenging for many people on the spectrum. And in addition, just because you have AS or HFA doesn't rule out the possibility that you also have a math learning disorder or dyscalculia.

This is interesting.

Although I'm good at poetry, drawing, and playing the keyboard, I am no good at maths. I failed maths in school, and if you gave me a sum like 17x12, I could never tell you the answer, even if I thought about it. My mind shuts down. I can't even work it out on paper, because I don't know where to start. The only method I can easily use is a calculator.

Anyway - back to the small talents I have - I may have these talents, but I can't seem to improve, no matter how hard I try. I can write poems, but only really simple ones - no metaphors or hard words involved (too difficult!). I can draw, but only cartoon-ish sort of pictures. I've been drawing ever since the age of 3, and my drawing has got better, but I still can't draw as good as some people. I find it hard to draw scenes with background, since I'm no good at perspectives. So if I drew people in the background, they always look too distant or too near, and then something doesn't look right in the whole picture. I draw people a lot but I can't draw their bodies properly. They either look too fat or too skinny. I find it easier to copy things from a book. I love playing the keyboard - but I can't do this with two hands. I just can't. I've been able to play songs one-handed since the age of 4, and I am really good at it, but I've never been able to play with two hands. My brain can't seem to let both hands do different things at once. On the keyboard, I can make up real songs, involving background rhythm and a tone which fits the type of song, (eg if I wanted to make a whole 2-minute song of ''I've been working on the railroad'', I would pick the right tone, which is tuba or brass or something else similar, and find a march background, which fits the rhythm, and then each time I play this whole 2-minute song I can remember exactly how it goes. I don't mean the actual tune, because I already know that, but I meant how the actual song goes, eg the introduction, how many times to repeat the tune until I play it in the vibration fill-in, and so on).

I am no good at remembering numbers either. Am I the only Aspie who doesn't remember numbers?