Do boys with ASD really excel at math?

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jayjayuk
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20 Apr 2015, 1:33 pm

No, but some do.

My stepson is 7, with Autism, and he's amazing at maths. It comes natural to him. I have ASD, and my maths is not so good. I'm good up to elementary math, and some descreet math. Although I have never grasped the rules of alegebra and I've tried time and time and time again. If I have a math problem, and need a solution to work the problem out, I can use a math book to look up the solution, but keeping it in memory ... no chance.

I'm a computer programmer though.



Girlwithaspergers
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20 Apr 2015, 2:10 pm

I barely got through math.



lostonearth35
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20 Apr 2015, 2:20 pm

I guess the same isn't for girls, or have they just not done nearly enough research about it. There's a never ending controversy that chicks can't do math, and I had a real problem with it starting in 3rd grade where I would cry in class almost every day when we did math. But I've always been really good at reading. I was what I've heard is called hyperlexic. Maybe Aspie girls are more likely to be excellent at reading, but I don't know.



nca14
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21 Apr 2015, 7:44 am

I had rather very good (5 in Poland in 1 to 6 scale, the higher number, the better mark) grades from math in elementary school, good (4) in "gimnazjum" (12 - 15 years old), but I had large problems with maths when I was about 16 - 17 years old (I even had revalidational hours because of unsatisfactory grades and AS diagnosis). But at the "mature" exam I had 100% on elementary level from math and above 90% on advanced level from this subject. I do not have dyscalculia. I suppose that I would be diagnosed with NLD in Northern America instead of AS(D)/PDD (which might be harmful) because I have rather "neurotypical" way of thinking (rather in words and concepts, not so much pictures and good abstract thinking) and my verbal skills may appear to be quite significantly better than visual-spatial ones. I remember that I said that I like maths or something like it when I was in pre-school age. I am not "gifted" in maths. Many aspects of Physics were hard for me.



halleluhwah
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21 Apr 2015, 12:18 pm

nca14 wrote:
I had rather very good (5 in Poland in 1 to 6 scale, the higher number, the better mark) grades from math in elementary school, good (4) in "gimnazjum" (12 - 15 years old), but I had large problems with maths when I was about 16 - 17 years old (I even had revalidational hours because of unsatisfactory grades and AS diagnosis). But at the "mature" exam I had 100% on elementary level from math and above 90% on advanced level from this subject. I do not have dyscalculia. I suppose that I would be diagnosed with NLD in Northern America instead of AS(D)/PDD (which might be harmful) because I have rather "neurotypical" way of thinking (rather in words and concepts, not so much pictures and good abstract thinking) and my verbal skills may appear to be quite significantly better than visual-spatial ones. I remember that I said that I like maths or something like it when I was in pre-school age. I am not "gifted" in maths. Many aspects of Physics were hard for me.

I think a lot of aspies are good with concepts and pad with pictures. I'm the same way



theautisticvictum
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21 Apr 2015, 1:31 pm

I have somewhat noticed that, many of most autistic males that I had meant had high intelligence but for some reason as myself I didn't have it, in fact it was a low average.

I still have controversies about that amongst if people are doing something to deplete my intelligence if it was there, as in people are making ways for me to not see and or notice it.

And yes, I am indeed female with many neurological problems.



AnonymousAnonymous
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21 Apr 2015, 2:19 pm

I'm an Aspie and I have never been good at math.


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21 Apr 2015, 2:22 pm

I really suck at math. Math is a four letter word to me.



Jacoby
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21 Apr 2015, 8:52 pm

Boy here.

Also diagnosed with dyscalculia, like multiplication and division is pretty much the extent of what I can do and I can struggle for some weird reason with those sometimes too. It just doesn't process, it doesn't work in my head and I forget it faster than I learn it.



RhodyStruggle
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22 Apr 2015, 1:44 pm

I wouldn't say I ever really excelled at math, but there were times I really enjoyed it. Other times I either had too much going on in my life to focus on school, or else the teacher or classroom environment wasn't working for me.

When I got to community college I had to start in remedial math. But I enjoyed it so much that when I transferred to the state university I majored in math. I got mostly B's in my math courses so I wouldn't say I excelled. But there were definitely times when I just intuitively grokked some concept that my classmates were struggling with. Like this one time, in a course on functions of a complex variable, a classmate asked how you can tell if one complex number (with an imaginary part) is greater than another. Me being half-asleep, I kind of just blurted out "You can't, the field of complex numbers isn't ordered." The student who asked the question turned around (she was at the front of the class and I was near the back - I slept in class a lot) and asked how I knew that. I explained that by definition (a definition which both this classmate and I had learned in the same abstract algebra course the previous semester) squares are positive in an ordered field, so the inclusion of imaginary numbers in the complex field necessarily precludes its ordering. Then the professor said I was exactly right, and worked through the definition and an example to demonstrate.


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Misery
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23 Apr 2015, 4:27 am

NewTime wrote:
I really suck at math. Math is a four letter word to me.


Same.

As a rule, I always refused to do most of it, and couldnt pay even a bit of attention to the rambling nonsense that was the various math classes throughout school.

Far as I'm concerned, this is one of the things that computers are for.... I give them the numbers, and they do the crunching.

Cant do a bit of it myself, never could. Ask me to multiply something, and very slowly, I might give you an answer. Ask me to do simple division, and you'll get a blank stare. And thus is the extent of my math skills.



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23 Apr 2015, 5:28 am

I'm getting sick of hearing this overplayed meme. I'm an aspie male, and I hate doing math. Not only that, but I have a lot of trouble understanding abstract mathematical concepts, even stuff that people younger than me usually have no problems with. I've been taking a 10th Grade-level math course over the last few months just so that I can upgrade my high school math to a higher academic stream, and much of the material has me absolutely stumped.

It took me years to really be able to do mental math, after they tried forcing it on us throughout elementary and middle school, and by the time I started getting the hang of it, I was already in high school where they FINALLY started allowing us to use calculators in class. As well, in 3rd Grade, I remember struggling with memorizing my multiplication tables, and again, it took me a few years before I got that down, by which time it wasn't a concern for the other students. Ever since 9th grade, I've had a horrible time with algebraic equations, particularly ones where you have to rearrange or "simplify" things to get the answers you need. I understand what variables are, I just can't solve for them worth a crap unless the equations that use them are really simple (i.e. 6*y=18; y in this case is obviously 3, as 18/6=3).

Oddly, I find that if I'm doing math work I actually understand, and the concepts are logical and make sense to me, I actually get an odd sense of enjoyment out of it. Weird, considering that when the questions and the work are illogical, which they are most of the time, I f*****g hate it. I guess I can say I'm good at basic math, but not the complicated BS, and even then, it took me many years to get to where I am now.



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23 Apr 2015, 7:52 am

I was so terrible at math, it wasn't even funny.

I remember transferring to public school my senior year and they put me in Algebra 2 which I was only in there for a month before transferring to the easiest math class on Earth. I remember having no idea what they were talking about at all. What the hecks a variable or a pethagron theorom? I was the class clown of that class and would do stupid stuff and i'm pretty sure my teacher didn't like me. There was this one girl who sat right next to me who i'm pretty sure liked me as well. That was the only thing I liked about that class.

I remember on the last test I took before I transferred, I wrote bogus answers on every single one of the questions. Then we had to trade off tests with someone else and we got to grade someone's elses test. And I gave free points to people even if if they got the question wrong and I wrote stuff like "great job you should go to harvard!" when they got it right and "You suck at life!" everytime they got it wrong. I'm pretty sure the girl who had to grade my test was like 8O when she saw what I wrote as some of my answers. I was laughing that whole class period.

I would call my teacher Redneck Angel because that's what her name sounded like when you said her last name first. No kidding either.



RubyWings91
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23 Apr 2015, 3:48 pm

Some people with AS are good at math. I was always mathematically inclined. If I were to guess, I'd say its probably most likely for those of us who recognize patterns easily, as math is very pattern based. Still, it's just a guess and I haven't done any in depth reading on the subject, although I think their may be some articles on the subject of AS and Math skills online.



AspieUtah
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23 Apr 2015, 3:57 pm

Apart from an unusual understanding of completing tax forms and budgets (corporate and individual), I have almost no mathematical skills. Algebra and calculus ... huh? Mostly verbal here.


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23 Apr 2015, 7:16 pm

lostonearth35 wrote:
I guess the same isn't for girls, or have they just not done nearly enough research about it. There's a never ending controversy that chicks can't do math, and I had a real problem with it starting in 3rd grade where I would cry in class almost every day when we did math. But I've always been really good at reading. I was what I've heard is called hyperlexic. Maybe Aspie girls are more likely to be excellent at reading, but I don't know.


I despise so sexism for these things. Wait, I just despise sexism.

Anyways, part of the reason that sexism is so horrible (or any -isms) is that the perception of how good you're supposed to be at something seems to affect people's capabilities of it. One of my profs was studying sexism and math scores specifically, and she shared some results from her studies one day in class. When girls (or boys) are given tests and are told before the test that girls tend to do poorly on the tests (or vice versa) and the opposite sex does well, lo and behold, when you properly counter-balance the study, find that being told your group will do worse on the test results in the group doing worse on the test than if they were not told that.

/sarcasm Hooray for social beliefs!


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