Doing maths subconsciously rather than conciously

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I'm wondering if this might be something common in aspies, or just me:
A lot of the time in school, when I do a math problem, I know the answer just from looking at it, but gave no idea how I arrived at that answer. Basically the problem seems to be handled by my subconscious rather than conscious mind. Unfortunately, despite getting the correct answer, I usually end up getting points taken off for not showing work, since it ends up taking a few minutes to figure out consciously how the problem is supposed to be done, which causes me to not do it. Does anyone else do this?

I have done this a few times. Not that it is very useful. In 4th grade the teacher asked the class what 12x9 was. I immediately just knew 108. So I raised my hand the instant she asked the question. I had to take a second to verify (not long enough that it was obvious I was thinking it through) and realized I was right. I mean if I am just going to double check myself then all it does is make the process take longer.

A slight variation to what you were saying is figuring out the answer in your head and showing your work it down. At school they like to see the work more than the answer. I think it can be similar to how people with aspergers can have trouble understanding their emotions, so writing down how you figured out an answer in your head can be harder for some people, possibly more so for people with aspergers

Last edited by Delphiki on 15 Apr 2012, 8:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

You sound like you have an unusual talent for that. Most people have to do it consciously, a few people can do it very quickly in their subconscious like you can. Some Aspies are terrible at math, some are very talented. Aspies are not cookie cutter people.

Oh my gosh, I wish. I'm so bad at math. It's the one subject I failed in high school, grade 10 math.

That's interesting. I'm terrible at math, but your problem sounds just as problematic as not being able to figure out the answers to begin with. I have a similar problem with foreign languages. I am good at picking up the structures behind the grammatical rules, but when I'm asked to explain the rules, I can't. I just know how they work.

I find I can do this if I have solved the problem before or if it is very similar to one I have solved. I usually have a good memory for numbers or solutions to math problems. I`m not exceptional at mental math but I have a good memory for shortcuts, for instances of squaring numbers near 50 or squaring numbers that end in a 5.

I`m an engineering student as well so dealing with numbers all day definitely helps. Recently I have been trying to memorize numbers as a memory/focus exercise. I don't know if this actually helps but I enjoy it for some reason. I've memorized the first 200 digits of e, trying to improve whenever I have time. If I'm standing/sitting waiting somewhere I recite all the numbers through just to make sure I don't forget. I wouldn't consider this exceptional memory, since I know NTs that could do the same if they put time into trying. They probably just wouldn't enjoy it as much

That's something said to be be seen among some intellectually gifted individuals.

I don't think it had to do with figuring subconscienly answer in math; that's more to do with the most natural way of the brain to learn language.

@brickmack, How did you get the skill to "compute unconsciously" in the first place?

There's a famous mathematician called Terry Tao who wrote a blog post which seems relevant. He said that learning a maths topic comes in three stages.

(1.) Pre-rigorous, when you often "know the answer" intuitively but find it difficult to express your method.
(2.) Rigorous, when you learn to stop trusting yourself and feel a duty to have a systematic method underlying your intuition.
(3.) Post-rigorous, when you get sick of being explicit all the time and learn to trust your intuitions again.

The best way to move from the pre-rigorous to the rigorous stage is probably to learn that one of your deepest intuitions is false. I recommend learning about infinite cardinalities for this purpose.

Really? It seems like my classmates in my Japanese language class are completely lost unless they consistently rote memorize the rules of conjugating verbs lest they forget it after a few weeks of no practice, whereas I'm able to find the patterns and remember how to conjugate them rather easily once I understand the structure behind it. Still, if our professor asks them to explain the rules involved in translating a particular phrase, they will usually be able to do it a lot better than I can, and when I usually try to explain it to them the way I learned, I usually end up confusing them.

Yes. Sometimes it's just intuition. Some easier problems, like in high school, can be done easily.

Usually works for me too this way, but I do have the ability to open what I was thinking.

Makes me feel like a robot.

On the other subjects this happens also. Like in history, psychology, biology, marketing... The answer just pops in to my mind.

If some harder excersice comes to my way, it's really hard to find my way to solve the problem, because active thinking and solving problems is kinda hard after this "computing". But I manage to do it if I try hard, and next time these things are automized too.

Hell, I have that problem with English!

Sounds similar to me, with some aspects of maths once I understand the concept (how it works) I process it in a non-linear conceptual/visual form rather than the standard linear process. I taught myself basic calculus and antidiffrentiation over the summer and could not understand the processes for some of the concepts so figured out the concept instead. For the aspects I understood conceptually I would look at the question, it would very quickly go through some mental process I cant really explain and then I would see the answer. While the answer was almost always correct (I sometimes mixed up negatives and positives, because I still have some trouble with them) I could not explain how I got to the answer. Some other aspects of math I do visually, like when Im averaging a lot of pairs of numbers I will visually project a number line infront of me, find both numbers on the line and zoom into the middle of the two numbers and read the average off the line - and can do this very, very fast.

I do like being able to do this, however it makes maths really difficult to learn and it is difficult to get help as I do not process things in the usual way. And then there is losing marks for not being able to show working - or having to figure out what working will lead to the already identified answer. At school I ended up rote learning maths because I really did not understand the way it was taught.

i do this sort-of, i dont literally see the answer, but i indeed instantly see the entire solving method, just with the constants/variables not yet entered. due to this, my math exams are a mess with substeps all over the place becouse i just "already put them down, to free up brain capacity"

however, on the flipside of this, i dont really see the logic in most methods (yes, i know math is the most logical subject you can get), so if i dont see the path within a minute of reading the exercise, i might as well give up; i'm not gonna figure it out on my own...

I don't know, I've had it as long as I can remember.