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camelia
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22 Aug 2011, 11:45 am

When I hear people give phone numbers as words, like I don't know.. one eight hundred plumber.. it drives me bannanas. The same in print.. I can't stand when people write numbers as letters, and don't include the actual numerics. Is this a spectrum thing?



Xaisede
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22 Aug 2011, 11:57 am

No... its easier for me to remember phone numbers as letters.


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22 Aug 2011, 12:05 pm

I also prefer words to letters; I have always had a great attraction to words in general.

But it makes sense that you might prefer numbers, if you were a numbers person. Someone who is a natural mathematician will associate intrinsic meanings to numbers just like I associate them with words and letters.

Are you particularly interested in or attracted to numbers? I don't mean, are you a genius mathematician, but more, do you have a natural affinity with numbers. It's kind of the way I have a natural affinity with words: Taught myself to read early; have a large vocabulary; tend to speak in a very pedantic manner. If you are attracted to numbers in a similar way, you might have been precocious with counting and arithmetic, tend to count things or play with numbers in your head when you're bored, notice numbers in your environment (either the symbols or the numbers of objects), and be able to think about numbers easily--you might for example instinctively keep a running total of your grocery bill while shopping, or idly factor numbers you encountered. I play with words like that, picking them apart to look at their etymological roots and then following the roots forward in time to see which other words are related; looking at the typical use of a word, the connotation...

I dunno. If you're a numbers person, sure, that'd make a lot of sense. I don't know if it's an autistic thing because being fascinated with numbers isn't really an autistic thing, but having a brain that naturally specializes at something (which could be numbers) is definitely an autistic thing. I bet the "autistics are great with numbers" idea has come from people observing autistics who happened to be numbers specialists and thinking it was universal.


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robh
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22 Aug 2011, 4:24 pm

Personally I find words easier to remember than numbers, the conventions you mention are often used for marketing which would suggest they make numbers easier to remember for most people.

The biggest problem I have with [phone]numbers is subconsciously transposing 2 adjacent digits into numerical order, have to check 2 or three times to make sure I have it correctly.


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