I tried to explain ADHD math to someone and they didn't understand at all

Edit: it appears that this is not exclusive to ADHD.

Posting this meme stemmed from my own efforts to explain my thought process when doing math and how it is similar to other people with ADHD doing math, while being different from every neurotypical person I'd talked to on the same subject.

While I didn't make the meme itself, instead finding it in my saves and wanting to share, I did accidentally spread misinformation that I had only backed up with personal anecdotal evidence.

I'll leave this up just so people can see the explanation below but this appears to not be ADHD related and just due to different people doing math in their heads differently...

niktemadur ,

Dude trying to get it from first principles!
Which is what I also lean towards. Give it to me step by step and I need to clearly map out each one... then the mind wanders and when I snap back to attention, I've lost the plot already, my mathematical surroundings are unclear, disorienting.

Add to this an erratic series of math teachers - some of them good, some of them blah - and this day trigonometry to me is a jumbled mess, but I loved calculus and was pretty good at probability and statistics.

IzzyScissor ,

Wait, let me check the math...

6+6=12 and 7 is one more than 6, so 6+7=13

Cool. Checks out.

MystikIncarnate ,

For anything times 5, I just take the other number, half it, and then multiply by 10. Voila. Times 5.

ornery_chemist ,

7 is closer to 10 than 6 so we consider that 7 is really just a 10 with a size-3 hole in it and we fill that hole with 3 from the 6 giving a 10 with 3 left over which make 13.

Also not an ADHD thing.

0ops ,

That's my strat too. Also confused what this has to do with adhd

SendMePhotos ,

But.. But.. That's just CORE MATH YOU CAN'T CHANGE MATH!
/s

Feathercrown ,

MATH IS MATH

Classy ,

My brain actually computes it first as 7 + 5 = 12 + 1 = 13.

I add 5s together a lot at my work (14, 19, 24... 63, 68, 73....) hard to explain why, but my brain jumps to 5s very easily for addition because of it.

Maven OP ,
@Maven@lemmy.zip avatar

Similarly, when I'm counting stuff I always do

Group of 3
Group of 3
Group of 4

Okay that's 10

Rinse repeat.

It just works very well for me to count lots of things very quickly and easily. I can easily see what a group of 3 or 4 looks like so the whole process is super fast.

Classy ,

12 is a great number isn't it. I remember one especially boring job I had for a while I would spend large amounts of time counting in base 12 on my fingers (using my thumb to tap the three segments of my four opposing fingers) into the thousands and start over.

Eyck_of_denesle ,

Same but for some reason 7+5 giving 12 is so amusing to me. It's like two ugly people giving birth to an adoring baby. I hate odd numbers btw.

Binette ,

Same! I don't have ADHD, but I do 7 + 3 = 10, then 10 + 3 = 13

For some reason, 7 and 6 aren't addable to me.

JimSamtanko ,

Holy shit balls I feel seen!

ryven ,
@ryven@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Interesting, I make sets of 10. When I see 7 and 6, half of the 6 moves over to make 10 + 3. I say "moves over" because it feels like dividing tokens into sets in my head.

GalaxyBrain ,
@GalaxyBrain@hexbear.net avatar

Elementary school had us using tokens for math constantly and it made it way harder for me. Especially cause 'showing our work' meant basically drawing the lil tokens on paper that were either black or white I think black represented a minus and white represented a plus (on paper, they were red and yellow irl). So I ended out doing the equation different and then reverse engineering the method they wanted from me.

Spitzspot ,
@Spitzspot@lemmings.world avatar

6-3=3, 7+3=10, 10+3=13

GarbageShoot ,

That's just called using heuristics, friend, though if ADHD impeded their progress in math, maybe ADHD people rely more on heuristics than neurotypicals do.

somename ,

Yeah this is just math.

balderdash9 ,
@balderdash9@lemmy.zip avatar

These ADHD memes hitting a little too hard

Martineski ,

This specific meme is bs and has nothing to do with ADHD.

balderdash9 ,
@balderdash9@lemmy.zip avatar

Well I guess that explains it lol

MacGuffin94 ,

This is how it is supposed to be taught. Common core has this exact quality of numbers explicitly shield or in primary school curriculum. Numbers are not static objects but the composite of infinite functions that can be used to determine the value in whatever base number system you want. Next time someone says school didn't teach math remind them that the US is something like 30th in the world at math and when the department of education tried to do something about it parents said it was too hard to understand and we just kept falling backwards.

Source : I have a BA and masters in math with a focus on education

Murdoc ,

I agree that this is how it should be taught. I wasn't taught it until high school. And even then it was by a university student who came to our physics class to talk to us about the kinds of things we could expect in university. :p

I'm in Canada btw.

Mountain_Mike_420 ,

In my head: 7 + 6 = 7 + 7 = 14 - 1 = 13

ladyunicornejg ,
@ladyunicornejg@toot.io avatar

@Maven Yet another "wait, normal people don't do this" moment for me...

bjoern_tantau ,
@bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de avatar

I always tell my children that Maths is finding the best way to cheat at a problem. Don't solve the hard problem. Solve the easy one that's kind of like the hard problem and then find the difference.

And judging by the school material that's how they're supposed to do it. But either the teachers aren't explaining it that way or the kids aren't listening.

stepan ,
@stepan@lemmy.cafe avatar

I don't think I have ADHD but I do it exactly this way.

Linnce ,

I definitely don't have ADHD and I do it exactly this way

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