Obsessions with math anyone?

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Anyone else find that they've become obsessed with math throughout life?
For me, math is something that I've always been good at. In school, it often seemed that once I got depressed I could never do well in subjects like english no matter how hard I tried.
But with math, no matter how sh***y things were going in my life or how depressed I was, I could always work through my math problem sets through sheer effort alone and get that sense of basic satisfaction. Thats why I'm majoring in Engineering right now, I wanted a job where my math interest could be applied in a real world work environment.

Anybody else feel similarly?

Yes. Doing math is pure escapism for me. I'm a physics/math major and actually enjoy doing homework.

Yes, on semi-rare occasions. But I do not know high level maths.

I enjoy a calculator (but damn! damn! damn! those graphs-- how I hate them! Jes' give me a loverly equation and I'm happier).

I love math and used to be extremely obsessed with it in elementary and middle school. I would sit there for hours doing math problems of any kind, but my favourites were math/logic puzzles. Now, my newest obsession is chemistry, which I'm sure I've mentioned before. Chemistry has a way of making me happy and in a good mood about things, even when life sucks. Sadly, however, I'm not currently taking any math classes in school.

Used to be not so much anymore though there are still some advanced conscepts I find quite interesting (like .999999...=1 and Gabriels Horn which dont ask me to prove that one.)

_________________
"we never get respect ... never a fair trial
[swearing removed by lau] ... as long as we smile"
Im tired of smiling.

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It depends on the area of math. I can't understand calculus at all since it has few applications in everyday life, but I immediately took to trigonometry. It's like going into a pleasant trance when I start working on a hugely complex problem using angles and distances. All through high school I tried to work out a simpler method than SOHCAHTOA for doing trig problems so I could become a world famous math prodigy and get honorary degrees from big universities, but I never quite made it...

I like math; I use to study it a lot, even on my spare time. My favourate is calculus. Calculus is smooth, flowing and interconnected. You could find everything you need to know about a curve, line, angle or volume just by aquiring a single coordinate and bits of the equation. Calculus is like a universal puzzle.

Calculus is both fun and a torture at the same time. I didn't like calculus much in school because we had a class that wouldn't get anything done, no matter what the teacher said/did. Applied calculus (aka physics) is a lot more fun.

I have been obsessed with mathematics for years now.

I read an interview recently with an Oxford maths professor. He said that he remembered as a young boy how he used to look a maths books and how, instead of feeling "fear" like many might feel, he felt a great yearning. He felt "I don't understand any of that, but I am going to understand it."
I also feel a great yearning when I look at maths books, but also despair, because I feel I've missed my chance. I spent three years at university doing a maths degree, which I wasted, and my obsession only really started to develop after I'd left.
I think I felt the "fear" at the time. This was partly inspired by memories of difficult maths lessons at school, where the teacher would talk at us for half an hour, then get us to answer questions for the next half hour while he went round peering over people's shoulders. I know now that it wasn't the maths that was the problem; it was Asperger's, and my difficulties with being "lectured" at and pressurised.
I was obsessed with maths as a very young kid. I was top in maths in every school I was at up till the age of 15, when the work actually became challenging, and my obsession waned.

I still find it hard to accept that I wasted the opportunity university gave me. It's more comforting to tell myself that things really couldn't have turned out differently, because the way I was back then couldn't be helped.
I hated university. I felt totally isolated. I have no friends now though, and it doesn't really bother me, so I don't know why it bothered me back then.

For years now I've let my parents influence just about every decision I've made in my life, and for years (as my AS remained undiagnosed) my parents laboured under the illusion that I was basically a normal guy suffering from prolonged teenage angst. My parents wanted me to study maths so I would become a City number cruncher. Then, as they imagined, all the rest would follow: wife, 2.4 children, etc. I never felt that I was normal, and I never felt they accepted me for who I really was, which contributed to my demotivation. The truth is, at the age of 18, I didn't want to think about work, and I wasn't confident I'd ever be able to land any sort of job whatsoever.

Eventually, though, I did become a City number cruncher. I only lasted one and a half years before getting the sack. I hated every minute of it.
Despite my conservative views and my respect for professional integrity, I have no interest nor skill in business administration, management, consultancy or salesmanship.

In recent years I've lost interest in just about all of the trivia that used to entertain me when I should have been doing my homework, e.g., pop music, movies, magazine, literature (not that I was ever particularly into literature).
I've also abandoned all the vague ideas I had soon after leaving school about teaching in Africa, going bungee jumping in New Zealand, and all the rest of it.
Travel, friends, relationships, clothes, food: none of these things interest me anymore.
I like to get out of London every now and then and visit the countryside, but that's about it.
All that really interests me now is the only thing I was ever really any good at - apart from football - namely maths (and related ways of thinking, e.g., chess). You just have to look at the popularity (at least in the UK) of Sudoku to see that there are many people attracted to problem-solving.
I think the closest I can get to realistically making a career out of problem-solving is computer programming, which I am studying and enjoying.
But even the "languages" of computer programming and chess (and especially Sudoku!) seem somewhat arbitrary and ugly compared to the perfect language of maths!

I wonder what my old friends would say if they could read all this. Probably, "get laid, you loser!"

I'm bad at math but I put "other" because I like playing with simple patterns that I can find; for example adding an even number to anything won't change it from odd to even or vice verse but multiplying it will- simple stuff like that. I also like to stare at patterns in tiles and trace the biggest pattern I can visually keep track of; sometime I try to calculate the tiles (usually only if it's squares or rectangles).

Yes especcially with weird things like .999999...=1 and Gabriels Horn (which is a therotical shape with finite volume but infinite surface area (so you could fill it with paint but could never paint it)) I want to build one but sadly its impossible .

_________________
"we never get respect ... never a fair trial
[swearing removed by lau] ... as long as we smile"
Im tired of smiling.

Vote for me in 2020

To be honest I hate maths... I'm not that bad at it, and some things about maths I love, but when you get examined on it and the wording of the question makes no sense I start freaking out and finding that maths isn't my thing.

I'm always seeing patterns of some sort in numbers, such as prime numbers, what numbers multiply or divide out to them, etc. I often see them in license plate numbers when I'm driving to and from work every day. It's always been that way for me it seems. Ever since Louisiana went to a plate numbering system of 3 numbers and 3 letters(we used to have 6 numbers and a letter), I don't see them as much, but do sometimes see relationships between the letters and numbers.

I am obsessed with the Fibonacci number sequence in which the first two terms are both 1 and every other term is the sum of the preceding two. Simple recursive formula, many varied relationships with patterns in nature and involving the golden ratio, which is (1 + radical 5)/2.

I spent years believing what I had been told in school that I could not do math because of my gender. Still after I unconvinced myself of that I find that I am very good at theoretical math.

I also compulsively count things.