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Small thing but hey if you hear someone working through simple math out loud, please don't tease them about it unless you truly know it's welcome. Dyscalculia is like dyslexia with numbers, people who struggle with it frequently make simple math errors. These are often reduced if we say the numbers out loud. Cracks about whether someone can calculate a tip or do other everyday math in their head...it can feel very not funny, and increase anxiety (making the calculating harder). 58 comments
@hollie @hag Oh yeah, I absolutely hear you there. I've only recently gotten comfortable doing things like in a board game, if there's somebody real math-y playing I'll just go "cool you seem like math person, can you move my marker along the points board please?" instead of having everyone waiting while I count each space laboriously. It was always so stressful! @Vidyala @hag Oh my gosh, YES! Games can be so rough that way! Many games require quick addition or subtraction as part of the mechanics, let alone scoring. We play regular games with two close friends and I LOVE LOVE LOVE that I can stop and think, take time, and just say, "math pause, one sec," and they all know what it means and even the pushy person is like, "Sure, go ahead." ๐๐ I want to popularize this idea of Slow Math Kindness.  @hollie "I can't do public math." I heard a professor say that to our class once, and it resonated for me.  @hollie Actually, it's not only people with dyscalculia who benefit from speaking aloud when dealing with difficult problems. Everyone does. People who refuse to do it for fear of looking silly are less effective problem-solvers than they could be. So don't feel self-conscious about doing it when it helps!  Use your fingers! I grew up with educators who would slap our hands (if they could) if we used our fingers to do math. Why?!? I've got ten digits that are awesome at keeping track of things, even though I'm pretty decent at math. Fingers are great! I encourage everyone who was ever shamed like I was about using their hands to count to unabashedly count on your fingers and toes. I hope this isn't rude, but to bounce off your post, a few years ago I saw an article about using one hand to count to 12, which I found amazing. You use your thumb to point to the different joints of the fingers, with index tip being one, middle top being two, all the way to the joint closest to the hand on the little finger being 12. It also allows for the other hand to count multiples of 12 each time you "wrap round", but that requires more mental arithmetic. @DuvetGecko @vincent @CppGuy I haven't heard of this but I do have a book I haven't read yet called The Complete Book of Fingermath, that supposedly helps you learn how to do fairly complex calculations using just your fingers: @DuvetGecko @CppGuy @hollie The ancient near-eastern peoples of Babylon and Assyria used the joints on a hand for counting (thumb excluded), to give 12 per hand. Which is not coincidentally how many hours make up a half-day. A whole day is two hands of hours.  Hell, I've got a master's in math, and still sometimes count stuff on my fingers. Embrace all the modalities!  @hollie Well thank you; I'm not in the habit of teasing people to begin with, as a rule, but I hadn't heard of this and didn't know about it before now. I appreciate the education!  Oh hey it's me. Working the cash register during the busiest time to do so was a huge mistake and a nightmare. But to be fair, I warned them. I did warn them. @ezlin Oh, much sympathy, I have some nightmare stories about working cash registers. I visualize everything, math is the same way, and that did NOT work with how they taught us to "make change", which just ended with the customer confused and me confused at their confusion because I didn't "count back" properly. I count poorly but I see blocks of numbers much more effectively, so like, accept my block, will you? Lol, they did not. :) Same. Visualization is how I think through pretty much everything, but for numbers it begins to fall to pieces. Add in some short-term memory problems and it's just comically bad. The "blocks" fade away and I can't get them back. :er_aaa: So I start over from the beginning & hope like heck that I don't get interrupted or distracted in some way. Which I also warned them about. Thankfully I had *amazing* co-workers. @ezlin I'm SO glad you have those coworkers! It makes all the difference. Also nice to know I'm not the only visualizer. My husband has aphantasia - he doesn't visualize AT ALL. Nada. Him trying to tutor me through algebra was....interesting! ๐ @hollie Please tell this to my aunt, who while otherwise a lovely person, teased me mercilessly about not being able to calculate the tip in my head. Jokes on her. My inability to do mental math didn't stop me from getting a PhD in astrophysics, and I always have a phone with a calculator on it now ๐ผ @kellylepo What's her number, I'm great on the phone! ๐ But seriously, that's so inspiring! I have a long, frustrating history with math yet I've always loved astronomy. I abandoned science as a major because of the math. I love that you made it through! Holy cats was not prepared for how positively this post would be received! A few years ago when I found out about dyscalculia (and my whole life clicked into place), no one knew what it was. Kinda blown away right now. :) @hollie This! @SallyMonster Yes! Me too, "more than one try to iron a number out of my brain," is so apt! Ha! :)  @hollie That sounds... Familiar. *Looks it up* ๐ฐ Oh no, this is me! I was in special education math, and I hadn't even heard of this... ADHD and Dysgraphia may be related... Fffffff @MontgomeryGator Yeah ADHD correlates with a lot of interesting divergent traits. :) (I'm also ADHD) @hollie I transpose numbers when reading them. Doesnโt matter how hard I try not to. @Laukidh That's a classic sign, yeah. Same. Accuracy improves if I go slow, but not all situations allow for that. @hollie I've never understood people who DO think picking on that kind of thing is "funny." It certainly hasn't been an understanding that has grown with age either. Turns out I just think the older generation that liked those jokes were just jerks.  @hollie Ah, yes. Swapping 2 for 7, rearranging numbers in sequence, adding when I mean to subtract. Losing track when counting. Trying to explain to people that, no, it actually *is* that hard. Having to triple check everything. And all the accompanying anxiety. @hollie @hollie I find that the response "Will you shut the fuck up, I'm trying to calculate, goddammit!!" usually ends the conversation quickly.  @hollie also never bring up pure math topics like infinitesimals with a person living with this .  @hollie never heard of that thing, but i think i got that.   Hereโs me, unable to do mental arithmetics in spite of trying hard for nine years at school. Then we were allowed to use electronic calculators (those old-fashioned thingies before mobile phones existed) and suddenly I became good at maths! I began to really enjoy it even , and I loved algebra - maths with letters, woohoo! So dyscalculia doesnโt keep you from understanding the logic of maths, it just keeps you from crunching numbers ๐ @hollie some people seem to think thereโs something obvious about โbasic mathโ; I have no idea why. Itโs a symbolic system that we made up, if you had a reason to work on it, you can probably internalize some of the rules but lots of people donโt - and donโt need to - care. |
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@hollie Respect for my fellow #dyscalculia buddies, just talking our way through it one number at a time! Just leave us to calculate in peace. <3