Human Calculator

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You know what? I used to be able to do this human calculator stuff. I could do it up to 8th grade (I never got into super-advanced math because I never did the classwork or homework), and then the teacher kept failing me when I didn't show my work on paper instead of doing it in my head. So then I lost my calculator ability.

Has that happened to anybody else?

I've never been able to quickly do calculations in my head. I can do simple ones not too bad but some can take me a little bit longer than normal. However, I recently found out that some calculations cxan be simplified.
Example: 1.34+.96 is the same as 1.30+1.00 (this is easier for me to do in my head than adding each place value in 1.34+.96)

I have never been a human calculator (although I would love to acquire that ability).

I use to like doing numbers in my head, yet my math ability is very basic.

I have found that I can do any math problem I am presented with (even complicated stuff like abstract math), given enough time (and reading material, if necessary).

Though my speed of the calculation is really slow, even for fairly simple problems.

i've always been crap at maths..

After reading Ender's Game, I got in the habit of counting doubles when I got upset. The highest I've got is 33554432. Took me ages to count that high.

when i get stressed or am feeling a bit scared / worried i tend to count cieling tiles. although i really like maths and can solve pretty much any problem with time and the aprpreate reading matirial, i am not that good at it. my ability goes out of the windows when i am stresse though.

jammie

I've always been very slow at doing mental calculation.

Something I like to do is take the letters of a word, assign each a number according to its position in the Roman alphabet (i.e. A is 1, B is 2 etc.) then fiddle with the numbers: add, subtract, multiply, divide, square, cube, extract roots, combine these operations, see what I get.

I have never had that ability although it really would be a nice ability though it would really be more like a neat trick than anything really vital. It is too bad that you lost that ability, in my state there are academic competitions and one of the categories is mental math. Students take these tests with 80 questions(complex let low math) in 10 minutes and the best scores get medals and they get to advance until they reach state level where they can even get scholarships. There is this one indian kid I know who is really good at this and because he was part of all of these things is probably why he got accepted to all of these really cool colleges. He got admitted to Harvard and offered a scholarship too, that is really crazy too.

I was good enough in math so that if a teacher asked why I didn't show my work and I answered "I did that in one step," they would believe me. Geometry was another matter. The teacher was big on having us write formal proofs; it was half of the class, and half of our grade. We'd have to spend a page or two demonstrating something like how a square always has four equal sides. Yeah, by the end of the semester I was starting to feel my brain go a little mooshy. Nice teacher otherwise, but I was real happy to put that class behind me and move on to honors trig.

"do your brain work like a database program from microsoft would?"

Straightforward Answer:NO.