My life revolves around numbers.

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Each number has a personality and evokes a feeling in me. 0 is lonely, isolated, and 8 is horrible and bullies others, for example.
I also count so many things: how many times I sip my tea, how many steps I take through a certain bit of pavement, etc. I even stim a certain number of times repeatedly.
I actually get rather upset if I get 8 tomatoes on my plate, or 6 steps up a stairway. I even got a bit upset today when I found out that there were 48 pieces of pasta on my plate, not 47 which would have overjoyed me because 47 is prime.
I also love learning numbers. I used to learn pi but now I prefer patterns so I'm learning the powers of two up to 2^50 = 1,125,999,906,842,624.
When I go out for a walk, or to uni, I observe the numbers around me more than anything else, and often even passages of text evoke certain numbers in my head.

When I was younger and had more spare time, I used to spend 4-6 hours a day (during the holidays) doing maths, mostly calculus and trigonometry. I took a national (UK) maths competition, got into the second round, and then came almost 250th in the UK.

I have also been told that my mental arithmetic is very good.
I have an IQ of 160, but my maths "subtest" was higher than my averaged IQ of 160.

Does anyone else have this? Could anyone explain why I am like this?

Have you seen Mozart and the Whale, or read the book? The guy in it is exactly like you.

Numbers are different. As I used to say, you can count on 'em

In all seriousness, I'm kind of the same way, especially about number theory and modular arithmetic. I really like the number 26, because it's the only number between a perfect square and a perfect cube. also, in gematria, it's the numerical number for the Hebrew name of god (YHWH). I don't believe in gematrics, much less YHWH, but it's an interesting coincidence.

I've also been fascinated by Fermat's little theorem (a^p is congruent to a mod p). Not to be confused with Fermat's last theorem (a^n+b^n=/=c^n, for n>2, and a,b, and c are positive integers), which is interesting to me as well, but the proof is a little above my head at the moment.

Sounds like an intersection of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and AS.

I learned a few when I was little, but now only remember up to 1048576 :'(

It sounds as though part of it could be
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinal_li ... nification
I don't know a great deal about it but I have a friend with this condition

I second that. It's a major symptom, though now as common as symptoms that involve germs, religion, etc. Though there is not always a physical compulsion that accompanies the obsession, it still is considered a form of OCD.

My brother has it. He constantly counts numbers and it interferes with others thoughts. He told me the only way for his counting to subside, is if he watches movies. He then concentrates and focuses less on numbers and more on the content of the movie.

My dad blames it on my brother's intelligence.

I have made a movement-performance around "pi". I recitate the first 500 characters in movement, so each number from 0 till 9 has one movement and I follow the order of the numbers. In two days I have a performance of it.
For me, the one is lonely. The two "splits" in a way, because two means "deciding", to me, it's dualistic (so I have a sharp movement splitting the room). the three I want to take "into me" and I don't know why, but it comes very close. The four is a sort of "posture", very slow developping into a pose. The five is a twist, because you have "round" and "hoek". The six is really a round movement, it's comforting. Seven is weird... eight has no beginning and no einding, but it feels stable. Nine is like "breathing out". zero I make just a circle.
I suck at math, but I love numbers! (and ballet is my SI for 20 years, so I combined it).
When someone is coming to visit and they come by car,I always wait for the car to come to be sure, that it is who I am expecting. It's maybe weird, but it's easier for me to identify a numberplate, than a face or posture, I mean, to be really sure.

I lke numbers. I can read a car numberplate and remember it for a very long time, and I'm obsessed with palindromes.

Maybe it's some form of synesthesia...


If he enjoy counting this is not OCD, (I don't know if your brother enjoy it of course...) it could be simply a passion. Which is propably the case of SteelMaiden, this is supported by her intelligence.

OCD on the other hand is linked to anxiety and make your life a hell when it strike. I know as I have it.

Thank you for these replies.

I think it might be a form of synesthesia; when I see a number like 68, or 16, I feel a bit uneasy inside, hard to describe. But when I see 17 or 47 or 97, it counteracts the uneasiness of the "bad" numbers.

I will see if I can read up about Mozart and the Whale, and then try and rent/download it.

I have been told by a social worker (not mine though) that it is highly likely I have a mild form of OCD (for other reasons, such as my obsessive hand-washing and rituals, which really do irritate me).

Ordinal Linguistic Personification is interesting; I can definitely relate to it.

I want to talk to my social worker about this, but I'm worried she won't understand.

Well if she's your social worker she ought to try and make an effort to understand. I can't say I understand it, but I'm not a social worker.

Does thinking about numbers overall make you happy, or anxious, or is it more complicated than that? It sounds like it is something that you were made to pursue. Do you think life is chaotic and numbers represent order, and enable you to control the chaos? That would point in the general direction of OCD. I'm not expecting answers to these questions, and you may have asked some or all of them yourself already.

Feeling that numbers have distinct personalities is, in fact, one of the classic forms of synesthesia.

Hope this helps clear things up

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiKcd7yPLdU[/youtube]

Of course numbers have distinct personalities.

Have you met 3? That guy is a total dick.