Asperger's and the math stereotype

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I'm wondering if AS causes the extreme development of one skill set to the detriment of another, which seems to be the case, as I'm not hearing of many well-rounded people.

(Wish I could comment on this thread more, I'm currently very busy. Will try and elaborate on this later.)

I'm terrible at math and always have been.
When I was at school, I would fail nearly all math exams/tests. I got math tutoring when I was aged 11-13, then I went to the middle of my class. Although as soon as I stopped the tutoring I struggled again and soon was at the bottom of the class like I was previously.
By the time I got to high school, math was my worst enemy and whenever I was in math class I would not do any work as I knew that I was going to fail anyway.

The stereotype that all aspies are math-geniuses is completely false i believe...and there is I and many others to prove it.

I was good at math until Trig. Now that im a few years out of school i've forgetten everything about trig. I was always good in Science, & History/social stuides. I always hated english and was my worst subject. I found it hard to come up with topics and write essays.

I have a raging case of Dyscalculia so I am horrible - HORRIBLE - at math.

I have a love hate relationship with math. I kind of like calculus from an objective standpoint, I generally get the logic behind it, and it can help to put things complicated observations into quantifiable and easy to manage terms. But it takes a lot of practice for me to be able to comfortably do some of the more convoluted and complicated functions. I'm always running into problems remembering what method I should be using, or forgetting some minor detail that messes everything up. And needless to say, when i'm under any sort of stress, my ability to do math just completely goes to seed. My whole family, in fact, is just terrible when it comes to the subject (we're by and large a family of lawyers and english teachers), so the possibility that there's some sort of latent dyscalculia at work isn't any sort of encouragement.

So basically what i'm trying to say here is that I hate that my major requires me to take math virtually till the end of time.

Sorry, guys, I'm the kind that perpetuate the stereotype I'm fairly good at math...

Not arithmetic or anything like that, I'm kind of clumsy and make stupid mistakes when adding or multiplying or such all the time. But I'm very good at higher level maths like calculus and up and I've even taken some graduate-level maths.

I'm strong in some aspects, particularly visual spacial stuff and pattern recognition. In school I did pretty average I guess and made it as far as calculus. I always seemed to have some pretty serious gaps in knowlege due to my diffuclties in paying attention, but I often made up for it by inventing my own short cuts or just looking for patterns in the examples. I'd like to be better at the higher math, but I don't know if I could ever learn the kind of patience it takes.

Math used to be one of my best subjects, but then since I started high school it has turned into my worst. The reason is teachers, I guess. I am really bad at memorizing, so the only things I really learned were the really basic stuff. Yet I usually got all or almost all correct answers at tests. I couldn’t remember the right formulas and all that, so I figured out how to solve the problems during the tests instead. My teacher figured that since I got the answers right, everything was fine. Somehow, I was better at math in practise than in theory, despite math consisting entirely of theory.

But now, I have another teacher who doesn't think like that at all. I have not only solved the problem, but do it in his way. He's also much worse at explaining, he just tells us how to solve problems, but he can't explain the logic behind it, which is what I have always needed to understand something. And when I ask "why" people around me just get annoyed, telling me to shut up and accept it, and my teacher says that's just how it is.

And so math is now one of the two subjects that I totally fail in. I feel a little sad about it. Even though I never really liked math that much to begin with, I still liked to be good at something.

I seemed to grasp math in the early grades without too much difficulty (1-7); I failed after then for the teaching environment changed in high school, as well as everything else (Daniel's routine went out the window and died on the pavement).

I wasn't extraordinary, but I was far more "normal" with math than I was English; I was ret*d in English for a few years.

I'm pretty enumerate but I like the concepts of some maths. I like abstract things like programing.

In university we had a project to build a beam out of balsa wood. You could use any cross section you liked but it had to be uniform the whole way through. The competition was the beam that could take the biggest load by weight. We had two thicknesses of bulsa we could buy.

I already knew instinctively what cross section would be best: I-box basically an I beam inside a box beam (fairly) narrow and tall. It actually surprised me some of the ridiculous designs that some people came up with.

Unfortunately I made an error in my calculations by one decimal place. It was stupid because otherwise my calculations were correct. Had I been more aware of what others were building before it was too late I would have caught it.

Needless to say mine was the only beam that didn't break. The lecturer had to stop putting weights on because when it did eventually did break it would likely had gone through the floor and/or injured the people standing around.

Of course mine was a tad too large in scale . But I pretty certain if I hadn't made that mistake I would have won. Nobody had a sensible cross section.

The equations didn't cover direction strength (grain), twisting, glue peel, etc but common sense will tell you the best design.

Last edited by 0_equals_true on 10 Apr 2008, 10:15 am, edited 1 time in total.

I loathe math.

I'm officially diagnosed with AS.

Apparently this makes me an outcast, since the thing I'm best at is something that's actually creative (music).

I'm a Math Major, but I am generally a B student at that.

I don't fit any maths stereotype.

I can do mathematical theories beyond my years. I find that quite simple to understand and cannot understand the trouble my maths: A+ classmates have with theoretical maths.

Too bad they don't teach those in school. Claiming it's too hard, yeah right...

But I can't do arithmetic. My mind just doesn't seem to process numbers too well.

Say anything more complicated than 5+7 and I'll have fled the room, like:

Multiply * 2/3, do ², figure out the root and all do this in half a minute and in one step...

that goes straight over my head.

Same here

It's like Reading Arabic lol
(Sorry Intellectual Joke)

Can't see why this would make you an outcast. Musical ability is respected and envied by more people than most other abilities. Besides there are creative aspects to mathematics and mathematical aspects to art. I don't think logic and creativity are quite as polar as most people think.

I'm creative when it comes to Humor and political philosophies.