this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2024

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I tried to explain ADHD math to someone and they didn't understand at all (lemmy.zip)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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...

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago

i was gonna say, this is ADHD math? I just thought this was mental math in short lmao.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

If you know those five intuitively, adding and subtracting become automatic even with adhd.

1 + 9 = 10

2 + 8 = 10

3 + 7 = 10

4 + 6 = 10

5 + 5 = 10

[–] [email protected] -3 points 2 months ago

I've got an idea for a meme for you:

ADHD be like: Man puts on pants

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

The meme has nothing to to with ADHD, however your explication of how it happened does.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

You can solve this one with redneck math. You simply flip the numbers in 7+6 upside down, which looks like 4+9, which is clearly 13.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

How I calculate percentages and settle for close enough.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

get to 10, add what's left.

[–] [email protected] 60 points 2 months ago (1 children)

This has absolutely nothing to do with ADHD

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago

That's how our math teacher taught us to take shortcuts in elementary school.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

14 & 6 = 6

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago (1 children)

7 + how much is ten? 3
How much is left? 3
Ten plus however much is left = 13

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I'm aspergers with adhd, so 🤷

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

This is a good approach, but for this example I break it up as:

7+6=7+3+3=10+3=13

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] -2 points 2 months ago

Omg i think I have adhd

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I calculate percentage like this. If 100% is the value, then I know what 10% is, then1%, so I do increments of both until I get to the correct value.

It may sound stupid,but it does help me get a % fast enough.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Ooh good trick

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

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!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Another neat trick: X% of Y is equal to Y% of X. That is, in your example, 27% of 65 == 65% of 27. So check and see which combination might provide fewer steps/messy numbers.

13.5 (50% of 27) + 2.7 (10% of 27) + 1.35 (5% of 27) = 17.55

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Ahh, that's a really good point! I forget about the "X% of Y = Y% of X"

Honestly, I normally just use a calculator quick (move the decimal twice, multiply and all that jazz) for weird percentages or I want a precise answer.

But I like knowing different ways of thinking about it because it can become easier than using a calculator (with practice). And it's fun, cause I'm a bit of a math nerd

[–] [email protected] 53 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I'm sorry, but this is a silly statement. This is by no means an ADHD thing. It's a pattern understanding or logic

I'm trying to teach my kid this. Not to use this specific method for addition, but recognize and understand patterns in math.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

Wait, let me check the math...

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

Cool. Checks out.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

MATH IS MATH

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Holy shit balls I feel seen!

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