Possible Dyscalculia

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I suppose that I can put this post here; I think that this post is at least a bit relevant to Asperger's.

Anyway, I am a mathematician -- specifically, I am a type theorist, but I used to be a set theorist, and I have a bit of a history with mathematical analysis. As one might expect, I also have Asperger's.

I have always struggled with arithmetic; as an example, after being held after school pretty much every day, I was never actually able to do long division. I understand the idea just fine, but doing the work seems to be all but impossible for me.
Similarly, I cannot do even basic mental arithmetic. I regularly screw up simple addition problems.
Also, when we had dance stuff in the physical education classes in grade school, I could never learn the steps, but I am pretty clumsy, anyway.
When I count things, I make errors if I do not completely focus on counting.
I recently tried to use a pen and paper to compute a pretty simple derivative, but I kept misreading my own handwriting, transposing things, and being annoyed by the "d/dx" notation*.

These things might seem familiar to anyone who is aware of dyscalculia.

I think that I might have dyscalculia, but some of the descriptions induce a bit of doubt in me.
As a specific example, "mathematics dyslexia" does not seem to fit my situation. As a type theorist, I think about pretty much everything in type-theoretical terms. When I was a set theorist, I thought about pretty much everything in set-theoretical terms. Clearly, I am at least somewhat competent with mathematics. Replacing "mathematics" with "arithmetic" in the descriptions of the symptoms yields a pretty good description of my history with this sort of problem, though.

Does anyone think that an evaluation would be worthwhile?
Can I rule out dyscalculia?
Does anyone have any other thoughts on this situation?

*Single-order differentiation is a function from the unary operations on reals to the functions from reals to the disjoint union of the unit type and the reals, damn it!

It's definitely worth looking at.

Grandin talks of 'pattern thinkers', 'picture thinkers' etc. and how she as an autistic person can have extreme difficulty handling information presented in a way her brain isn't wired for.

I can identify. As a tech geek, if you give me an algorithm presented as a big block of code in text, I can visually scan it and work out what it does, often within minutes. But if you give it to me as an architecture diagram, I simply can't process it; it's overwhelming.

Oh, I have otherthoughts. I like how you put that.

As a project for fun, or maybe for spite, or both, I have been looking at my local school system against my state (Virginia) and the US in five different time periods: 1972, 1980, 1992, 2004, and 2023. The specific time periods are just because I found good social data on these time periods so it was convenient.

One of the things I have been looking at were IEPs. Who gets them and why.

At my kid's elementary school, 26% have an IEP for dyslexia, dyscalculia, or dyspraxia. 4% of Virginia students have an IEP for those things. Children of color are twice as likely to have an IEP for one of these things as white children, which does not sound natural to me. Culturally, children of color should be less likely to have IEPs of this nature. I think diagnoses for these rare disorders are being given out carelessly.

You may have dyscalculia. But I think this issue has already been swollen out of proportion to the point where it has no functional meaning. Personal interest would be the only reason to see if you really have dyscalculia, and probably your own research would be more accurate than a "professional" diagnosis at this point. If you are a mathematician you will not be taken seriously. Why would you do a thing that is hard? (sarcasm)

Actually, I would like to go through the Horrible Pain of getting a PhD, and a diagnosis might facilitate getting accommodations.



As a mathematician, I am bound by solemn obligation to be kind of a clown, anyway.



"I must do what I must do, and I do, though I know better."

I probably should have written "single-variable" or "monovariate" instead of "single-order".

I will have a talk with my physician. Ideally, the talk will occur sometime soon.



I saw a relevant TED talk. I remember that a lot of the stuff made may say "ehhhhh...", but I think that this idea has merit.

Also, I appreciate your anecdote, even if I start swearing a bit when I see large blocks of source code.
Granted, I do like Haskell and Agda.

Welcome to the possible Dyscalculia club!



It's a cool club I promise.

Although I was definitely not expecting this thread to start with "I am a mathematician". I can't relate to that part.

Personally, for me, mathematical dyslexia or numerical dyslexia fits quite well. I have issues what you'd expect of dyslexia (struggling with left and right, accidentally skipping lines, numbers switching around) but I am average at spelling and I mix up the order of numbers significantly way more often than words (words only happen when I'm really tired, not concentrating or sleep deprived to the point of hallucinations).

I've given up on getting a diagnosis. Growing up it was always "you're faking it for attention!", "it's just maths anxiety" or "you don't seem like the type to have a learning disability" or my least favourite "but you're good at other (unrelated) things so clearly you don't have it".

I did not expect to see a mathematician writing about discalculia either. But I share something in common with you - I never learned long division either. I was supposed to learn it in Year 6, when I was 11. But I never got past the first step.

Later, when I went to college, I was supposed to learn quadratic equations. So I did in a funny way, knowing the answer while not doing any of the working out. To pass, I had to do the working out. So I quit.

Arithmetic is difficult, imo. Your brand of mathematics sounds difficult, too.

Thank you.





How would you define or otherwise characterize mathematics? Are you thinking of high-school stuff?

High school maths is all I got up to. I can't fathom your type of maths, I've never seen it or done it.

I definitely have dyscalculia. I'm not diagnosed but my bio father was dx'd with it at a young age, my older half sibling has it, and I was behind multiple grades in school all due to math struggles.

I recall being in first grade and grasping nothing of basic arithmetic. I'd have all these addition exercises and I was totally lost.... I knew 2 + 2 = 4. Everything else was a sheer guess.
I was placed back into Kindergarten mid-school year.

I needed remedial math every summer. The teachers said I needed "extra attention" (likely for more than just math tho) and recommended homeschooling. So that's what my mom did after 2nd grade.

I only ever got to algebra 1 and I was 21 by the time I understood it at all.

I work retail and often operate a register and work in the cash office as well to keep a record of money. Money is tangible, I don't find it at all difficult to count. But I can't do mental maths at all. And I'm always reading customer's totals all wrong.

Imo a formal diagnosis has no benefits for adults unless it's so severe that you need accommodations.

Yeah. I started struggling with maths when I was around eight years old. Then I got to secondary / high school and I was breaking down in tears struggling to understand any of that information. I had no desire to pursue it further.

I had some trouble with arithmetic in the primary school, and worse trouble with mathematics in the secondary school. It was one of my worst subjects. Numbers always seemed rather cold, abstract things to me. I did rather better at applied mathematics where there at least seemed some kind of point to it, and somehow got used to the sums needed to do science, so these days I'm fairly fluent with formulae etc. as long as they're not too complicated. There must be lots of people who are worse than I am at elementary mathematics.

I found something odd when I did the AQ test. The counsellor who first administered the AQ test said I seemed to have ASD but that there was something a bit weird going on with numbers. Specifically:
I don't usually "notice car number plates or similar strings of information."
I am not "fascinated by dates."
I am not "fascinated by numbers."
I am not "very good at remembering phone numbers."
I am not "very good at remembering people's date of birth."

Those were all questions on the AQ test I took. It seemed odd that 10% of the questions were about fascination with, and a good memory for, numbers.

I suppose I never had any natural talent for numbers, but having pushed myself hard I was able to master enough of such stuff to do quite well in my science career. I rather like writing computer programs, but what I like most about it is that I end up with a program that does the sums for me so that I don't have to do the sums manually every damn time.

Ah, all those "fascinations" with numbers I do actually have.

And now I also remember the horrible time I had at uni with basic and then advanced statistics. I had to get a tutor to help me with the whole lot.

^
I can't say I have absolutely no interest in numbers. There's some fascination with them here and there, but not the kind that would help me master the standard curriculum.

They told me I'd best not do pure mathematics for A level, and instead to do mathematics with statistics, which they reckoned I'd find a bit easier. They were very likely right. I passed the exam by the skin of my teeth. I suppose I'm OK at these number subjects as long as they're not too advanced. Above a certain level it's all too much for me.

Some of the statistics concepts were interesting to me - the idea that correlation is different to cause and effect, the idea that the sample has to be representative of the whole population if it's going to work, and the way a poor grasp of probability theory can cause uneducated people to draw the wrong conclusions from information.

I kind of like the way my brain still doesn't quite agree with the undeniable fact that if you toss a coin 20 times and it comes up tails, then the next toss still only has a 50:50 chance of coming up heads. As a large number of tosses tends to give half heads and half tails, intuition suggests that after 20 tails then the average has to eventually reassert itself, therefore it's more likely to be heads next time, but no, it's the same 50:50 chance, because there's no mechanism by which past tossings can affect future tossings.

I have zero fascination with numbers personally. Instead I am enamored with fictional worlds.