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This describes my experience with ADHD except your head is filled with impulsive thoughts (noise), so you struggle to string together a bunch of numbers in a lo

by sizzle 5y ago

This describes my experience with ADHD except your head is filled with impulsive thoughts (noise), so you struggle to string together a bunch of numbers in a logical forward progression through a formula, which also induces cognitive load when recalling the formula to your working memory when it is overwritten by the impulsive thoughts. I can get around this by brute forcing the numbers into the formulas on paper and going through each step slowly but surely, even steps that people can do mentally. I just need significantly more time than my peers to finish. Taking stimulants and increasing my dopamine levels across my synapses alleviates much of the working memory deficits I outlined. I wonder how many of these students that struggle were just undiagnosed ADHD and not deficient in an low IQ mental handicap sense.

spiralx 5y ago
> I wonder how many of these students that struggle were just undiagnosed ADHD and not deficient in an low IQ mental handicap sense. I've got ADHD that was undiagnosed until a decade after finishing my degree, and maths was my favourite - and best - subject all the way from age 4 through to doing solutions to Einstein's equations involving 10+ A4 pages (both sides) of tensor mechanics for my final year project. My results across that time showed the more maths in a subject the better I did, the more writing it had the worse I did. Doing maths is like reading is for me - an external cognitive structure that I can follow to make my own brain calm down while in that process. While I don't do much maths nowadays, I literally read whenever I'm not actively doing something else - I read a page or two of my book in-between clicking reply to your comment and starting typing this reply. Maths involves a lot of "muscle memory" once you get past the initial hump. But it's often poorly taught at an early age to the level of inducing near-phobic levels of discomfort with it which to me seems strange. But I don't think there's any extra issue with having ADHD and maths ADHD is very comorbid with dyslexia, dyspraxia, dysgraphia and dyscalculia - around 20–60% of people with ADHD also have one or more learning difficulties. Dyscalculia affects as many people as dyslexia, but dyslexia is far more well-known and more likely to get diagnosed and helped with. There's a nice summary box of typical symptoms of dyscalculia in this paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6440373/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6440373/

by sizzle 5y ago

spiralx 5y ago

> I wonder how many of these students that struggle were just undiagnosed ADHD and not deficient in an low IQ mental handicap sense. I've got ADHD that was undiagnosed until a decade after finishing my degree, and maths was my favourite - and best - subject all the way from age 4 through to doing solutions to Einstein's equations involving 10+ A4 pages (both sides) of tensor mechanics for my final year project. My results across that time showed the more maths in a subject the better I did, the more writing it had the worse I did. Doing maths is like reading is for me - an external cognitive structure that I can follow to make my own brain calm down while in that process. While I don't do much maths nowadays, I literally read whenever I'm not actively doing something else - I read a page or two of my book in-between clicking reply to your comment and starting typing this reply. Maths involves a lot of "muscle memory" once you get past the initial hump. But it's often poorly taught at an early age to the level of inducing near-phobic levels of discomfort with it which to me seems strange. But I don't think there's any extra issue with having ADHD and maths ADHD is very comorbid with dyslexia, dyspraxia, dysgraphia and dyscalculia - around 20–60% of people with ADHD also have one or more learning difficulties. Dyscalculia affects as many people as dyslexia, but dyslexia is far more well-known and more likely to get diagnosed and helped with. There's a nice summary box of typical symptoms of dyscalculia in this paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6440373/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6440373/