Anyone else terrible at math?

Post Reply New Topic

I'm old enough to have experienced "New Math" in first grade. We had to paint amoeba-like "sets" with objects inside and outside the set, and I promptly did it wrong. We also had wooden cubes that represented 1, bars that represented 10, and slabs that represented 100. When you put them all on top of one another you got a really big cube that represented 1000.

In secondary school I was quite good at maths (except probability calculus), but I don't know whether it was due to New Math. I was hopeless at higher algebra because I couldn't visualise it anymore.

math is like reading russian to me. I can do anything in my head as long as i can envision it. once you get to double and triple digits, forget it. I was considerably deficient in my math classes in college. for some reason i just dont get it.

Absolutely. One of the facts that led to me being tested for Asperger Syndrome as a child was that at 10 years of age I was college-level in every subject except mathematics. I utterly failed to grasp mathematics at a very functional level and still do. I can (and do) lecture anyone (and everyone) on philosophy, language, comparative anatomy/taxonomy, astronomy, and more, yet I still count on my fingers.

There is a college here in Massachusetts essentially for child prodigies, and I was prepared to enter, yet my dyscalculia prevented me from obtaining the scholarship I would have needed.

I simply cannot think mathematically enough to follow through with it as a study. It is the crux of my AS, seems inseparably bound to all of my 'Aspie' traits, and may or may not be related to being born with an enlarged frontal lobe at the expense of the parietal lobe.

I was quite good at maths but it was english dat i struggled.

I was always much more interested in learning history, Polish or foreign languages at school than maths, chemistry and physics. I hated those lasts subjects (in high school I was happy enough to have a physics teacher who used to give us good grades practically for nothing, he was better in telling us jokes than in teaching so I didn't have any problems with those lessons) and it was a relief not to learn pure sciences any more when I graduated from school.

Anyway, we were afraid of our maths teacher who was strict and her personality was... let's say that not very nice (physical appearance too, when I met her for the first time I thought her to be in her early 50's, later I found out she had to be 36 or 37 in that time). There was only one girl in our class who really liked her subject. I had private lesons with a paid teacher but it didn't help too much.

I am not terrible at it, but not great. Algebra was a pain. I was always much better at English, languages and all disciplines involving reading and study. I was good at math until I lost interest due to bizarre teaching methods.

I have dyscalculia as well. I always had problems with math, and I still do.

Well, "getting the bigger picture" requires your right brain to do that, but despite the fact that I like math and probably do well at it, I'm still heavily left brained. Of course, the best way to do mathematics is with both sides of your brain.

Dyscalculia is actually a common AS characteristic (contrary to the common stereotype that all Aspies are math geniuses). I personally received math tutoring in elementary school. Later, however, I ended up teaching social statistics to graduating university seniors (though, technically, statistics is not math).

Cheers,

Mark

I am, next to neo nazis math is one of my worst nightmares

The only part of math I'm bad at is the smaller calculations. I just make dumb mistakes all the time. Which sometimes prevents me from getting a better mark.

Failed math horribly in school...what year was that...see?

But I can learn a programming language in five days and do useful things with it. Strange stuff.

I'm quite terrible at math, but I don't know do I have dyscalculia or not. The most difficult thing for me is transforming the verbal information of a math problem to the mathematical form. I have no idea how to even start. The whole mathematical system is difficult for me to understand, because it's too abstract.