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I have ADHD (where dyslexia is a common co-morbidity). I'm not dyslexic, but I tend to experience dyslexia-like symptoms with numbers. Never letters, just numbe

I have ADHD (where dyslexia is a common co-morbidity). I'm not dyslexic, but I tend to experience dyslexia-like symptoms with numbers. Never letters, just numbers. It made math hell in school. Like you describe, it's not that the numbers are literally moving on the page. It's that they sort of... blob together in my consciousness, like there's a blind spot in my visual understanding, and my brain tends to fill in with numbers that look close enough. I tend to transpose numbers very very easily, swapping 6s and 9s, 2s and 5s, 7s and 1s. There's an additional layer of challenge where numbers are involved; with words, there are spellings that are obviously not words, or words that don't make sense in a given sentence. With numbers, there's no easy way for your brain to check whether what you read is accurate, because there's no equivalent of numbers not making sense.

fiblye 6y ago
Oh man, so this is an actual problem? I've had this a lot as well, but I only have it with numbers and with multiple choice tests. For example, if I'm given a reading passage, I can accurately answer questions about it. But once those are put in A/B/C/D or 1/2/3/4 options, I will absolutely mess them up. I will know the answer is A, I will put my pencil down on the A bubble, I will fill in A, then later on I'll see that somehow I filled in C. I had this problem a lot on tests and thought that maybe I was just being dumb and not having the correct answer, since usually you only get a scantron sheet back with zero context. About 3 years ago I started doing practice tests for language learning, of which many questions were multiple choice. I'd write the full answer for extra practice, finish the test, wait a couple minutes, then go back and check my answers. The written part of the answer would match up most of the time. The letter/number preceding it was wrong 1/4 of the time. I've also had it with math exams a few times, where I mix up digits usually around decimal points. Sometimes it even happens when coding and those are really tough problems to debug.
v8engine 6y ago
Check out Dyscalculia.
epse 6y ago
That tends to be called dyscalculia and also occurs often with ADHD
polytely 6y ago
I have exactly this, still have a lot of mental math. At school teachers just gave up at some point and gave me a calculator, I still have a lot of trouble with mental multiplication and converting between analog and digital time (doesn't help that in Dutch you say 15:30 like 'half four'). I'm also terrible at holding numbers in my head, if I do not keep paying conscious attention to it, they get reversed or substituted. I remember all my PIN's by the motion you used to input them instead of the number itself. Programming made me discover how much I love math, but I still miss a lot of basics because I never 'got it' in elementary school, and thus ended up in the lowest levels of math in highschool, where it was extremely boring and tedious (because it was actually way to easy), I wish I could send a programming book/numberphile videos to my 12-year-old self, because I think I could have ended up using high-school time way more effectively, instead of just going through the motions.
- violetgarden 6y ago
  Mental math is so difficult for me that it’s embarrassing! The numbers just don’t stay in my head long enough. I used to feel anxiety if math came up in conversation because I simply can’t calculate in my head like others do, and it makes me feel like a fool. In school, I’d think I’d be doing great on my math problems. When I’d get my work back, I did terrible because I’d accidentally change the numbers in the middle of the problem. I also always had a feeling that I missed some foundational information because nothing ever clicked for me. I put it down to switching schools a few times, but I think it may have been something more than that now. I was actually scared to even try programming because I was always told you need to be good at math, so I thought I would fail terribly.
  - rodw 6y ago
    > Mental math is so difficult for me that it’s embarrassing! The numbers just don’t stay in my head long enough. I used to feel anxiety if math came up in conversation because I simply can’t calculate in my head like others do, and it makes me feel like a fool. This is a huge problem for me too, but I take solace in the observation that that isn't _math_, that's _arithmetic_.
- 6y ago
Swizec 6y ago
Wait this is a thing!? I always thought it was just me :O My whole life I’ve been swapping 2 and 5. Or I go to write 6 and 5 comes out. Stuff like that. Only numbers tho. Letters are fine. One trick I’ve found when checking numbers is to compare them both forwards and backwards as a sort of checksum. This has become less of an issue now that you can almost always copypaste but still comes handy
james_s_tayler 6y ago
dyscalculia?
Clownfused 6y ago
It's possible you have Dyscalculia

fiblye 6y ago

Oh man, so this is an actual problem? I've had this a lot as well, but I only have it with numbers and with multiple choice tests. For example, if I'm given a reading passage, I can accurately answer questions about it. But once those are put in A/B/C/D or 1/2/3/4 options, I will absolutely mess them up. I will know the answer is A, I will put my pencil down on the A bubble, I will fill in A, then later on I'll see that somehow I filled in C. I had this problem a lot on tests and thought that maybe I was just being dumb and not having the correct answer, since usually you only get a scantron sheet back with zero context. About 3 years ago I started doing practice tests for language learning, of which many questions were multiple choice. I'd write the full answer for extra practice, finish the test, wait a couple minutes, then go back and check my answers. The written part of the answer would match up most of the time. The letter/number preceding it was wrong 1/4 of the time. I've also had it with math exams a few times, where I mix up digits usually around decimal points. Sometimes it even happens when coding and those are really tough problems to debug.

v8engine 6y ago

Check out Dyscalculia.

epse 6y ago

That tends to be called dyscalculia and also occurs often with ADHD

polytely 6y ago

I have exactly this, still have a lot of mental math. At school teachers just gave up at some point and gave me a calculator, I still have a lot of trouble with mental multiplication and converting between analog and digital time (doesn't help that in Dutch you say 15:30 like 'half four'). I'm also terrible at holding numbers in my head, if I do not keep paying conscious attention to it, they get reversed or substituted. I remember all my PIN's by the motion you used to input them instead of the number itself. Programming made me discover how much I love math, but I still miss a lot of basics because I never 'got it' in elementary school, and thus ended up in the lowest levels of math in highschool, where it was extremely boring and tedious (because it was actually way to easy), I wish I could send a programming book/numberphile videos to my 12-year-old self, because I think I could have ended up using high-school time way more effectively, instead of just going through the motions.

violetgarden 6y ago
Mental math is so difficult for me that it’s embarrassing! The numbers just don’t stay in my head long enough. I used to feel anxiety if math came up in conversation because I simply can’t calculate in my head like others do, and it makes me feel like a fool. In school, I’d think I’d be doing great on my math problems. When I’d get my work back, I did terrible because I’d accidentally change the numbers in the middle of the problem. I also always had a feeling that I missed some foundational information because nothing ever clicked for me. I put it down to switching schools a few times, but I think it may have been something more than that now. I was actually scared to even try programming because I was always told you need to be good at math, so I thought I would fail terribly.
- rodw 6y ago
  > Mental math is so difficult for me that it’s embarrassing! The numbers just don’t stay in my head long enough. I used to feel anxiety if math came up in conversation because I simply can’t calculate in my head like others do, and it makes me feel like a fool. This is a huge problem for me too, but I take solace in the observation that that isn't _math_, that's _arithmetic_.
6y ago

Swizec 6y ago

Wait this is a thing!? I always thought it was just me :O My whole life I’ve been swapping 2 and 5. Or I go to write 6 and 5 comes out. Stuff like that. Only numbers tho. Letters are fine. One trick I’ve found when checking numbers is to compare them both forwards and backwards as a sort of checksum. This has become less of an issue now that you can almost always copypaste but still comes handy

james_s_tayler 6y ago

dyscalculia?

Clownfused 6y ago

It's possible you have Dyscalculia