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

7+6

You need 3 to get to 10. 3 left over. 10+3=13.

I'd split up the 6 into (3,3) in my head

Same thing as 7+3+3

Nah, I'm down with the 9s. 9+6 is 15 so it must be 13

It is. Some people find more common numbers easier to add, then just figure out the difference. People in this community love to call totally normal stuff “adhd logic.”

I try not to be all "that's not ADHD that's just normal" here but yeah this one has nothing to do with ADHD.

I have no attention span and this is not how I do math.

What most people misunderstand about mental illness diagnoses is that most people have most of these symptoms. It's only when these symptoms overlap and disrupt your ability to *healthily function as an individual that they require a diagnosis and medication/therapy.

Edit: Added healthily as that's the real distinction.

I think the reason "new math" gets flack, is because it's a new way of teaching math, and alot of teachers aren't as good at teaching in that way yet. Still, kids should be taught that it can be a way one does calculations. Another thing I think should be incorporated into early childhood education is the use of an abacus, the Japanese do this and it supposedly helps greatly with mental math.

They're also trying to teach that in math classes (it gets called "new" math) but the boomers are freaking out because "why can't they just do normal additions like we used to, this is so complicated".

So, as a childless Xennial, I have to ask... is today's "new math" the same "new math" that people complained about in the 60s?

https://youtu.be/W6OaYPVueW4

If so, that's an awfully long time for something to be shunned as "new."

we never need to just do a long division.

Truth. I recently got a neuropsych evaluation and part of it was an unexpected (to me) IQ test. And staring me in the face, for the first time in ~30 years, was a few pages of arithmetic problems. Took me a minute to recall how to do decimal multiplication but it did come back to me. Long division? Nope. Had no freaking clue. Given that it was timed I just left blank anything I couldn't work out in my head. Maybe if I had time for trial and error I could have eventually figured it out. But one thing is for sure... the odds of me ever needing that skill again are fairly low.

This. I went from 50s and 60s to high 90s in my last 2 years of high school math because we were getting taught wave functions and real science math finally and all you need to know there is how to figure out which formula to use and which numbers to plug in. I'm terrible at basic arithmetic but crush algebra and later got good at food math by necessity. Also just finding ways to not count as much helped. Like when doing catering we would store plates in basically giant poker chip sets on wheels. People used to stack em in randomly until I finally figured out the closest multiple of 10 you could get to in a stack before going over the top. It was 70 plates and each dolly or whatever had 4 slots for stacks, so if all was in place each was 280 which made getting the plates ready for events way quicker cause people didn't have to manually count them, just use your 7 times table and then count the remainder to add or subtract. Once I figured out that you don't necessarily NEED the math you learn in school but if you remember to use it, it can really fucking speed things up. Also all math should be represented as algebra from the start, instead of 2+2= and leaving a blank space phase it as 2+2=x and solve for x. I think more complex algebra wouldn't scare kids as much if they knew they were kinda doing it all along.

isn't the problem specifically that some people just can't really do intuitive math for small numbers? like all through school everyone else just breezed through memorizing the multiplication tables and i just sat there manually adding numbers together and felt so fucking stupid and worthless in math class

the smart way to do math

the smart way to do math is called "use a calculator, sweatyy"

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.

Wait I do that kind of math and I am not adhd?

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

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

I think so, but I'm so deep on the autism spectrum that I'm probably SCUBA-certified, so...

Yeah this is just math.

Thank you! That's pretty neat. I tried 27% of 65

I added two 10% increments (6.5+6.5)... but instead of adding 0.65 (1%) seven more times, I added a 5% increment (6.5/2 = 3.25) and then 2 increments of 1%

So 6.5+6.5+3.25+0.65+0.65 = 17.55

I still had to use a calculator to add those weird numbers (and also check my work), but it does seem really practical for easier numbers. I usually need percentages for pricing (i.e. discounts/tipping), and the percentages are normally in increments of 5%, so that's pretty useful for figuring out a 15% or 75% of something real quick... or at least get me really close (when talking about something like $X.99)

Regardless, I appreciate the head trick!

Edit: I guess I could've done 30% and then subtracted 1% twice; but it's the same issue (of adding weird numbers) with the same outcome anyway. So thanks again!

Ooh good trick

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

It's interesting how people develop (or are taught, I guess) different compute models. My brain generally works in increments of 5 and 10 ('normal'), 8 ('8*8= my Nintendo 64', thought over and over again as a kid), and 6 (no idea why). Works that way for pretty much all of the basic operations.

Like looking at this, I automatically convert it to 6+6+1.

Not great at math generally, though - really should go back and relearn the stuff I should've grasped in high school.

14 && 6 == true

For me it's:

6 is half a dozen, so 6+6=12, then 7 is 6+1, so 6+7 is 12+1=13

I did 5 (+2) + 5 (+1) = 10 (+3) = 13

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