Me too PF. School spelling champ at 9yrs old but wouldn't win anything for typos these days. Can work out how much fabric, paint, cement I need for jobs but not all at once. Have never used calculus or logarithms since giving up maths after O levels.
Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
"The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
I can get a close enough (because I'm not pernickerty) estimate in seconds but OH will take 5 minutes to calculate it within a decimal point of its life. I can't,even hold calculations in my head,for 5minutes! Unless you're measuring twice to cut once or measuring medication, who cares? I don't. Curmudgeonly point: How many 4 or 5 digit codes do you have to remember in daily life? Pin numbers, door codes, phone security etc. I can hold a finite number in my head (not sure how many, but 8 is close enough). If I try to add another , one falls out.
I can’t do maths at all, I can add up my money that’s enough for me, but I am a good at growing plants and knitting and crocheting, as you say, we are all good at something. My little grandson has just had IQ test, he’s in the top 2% so he tells us now that he’s genius 😀. On the other hand, he’s hopeless at spreading jam on his toast!
Gardening on the wild, windy west side of Dartmoor.
We had this book of numbers at school, nobody told me what they were for.But if you picked the right one, you got a tick. I used to stick a metaphorical pin in a random page. I never got a tick.
@B3 Are you talking about Log tables. I never knew what a logarithm was until I did ONC Chemistry, one of the Maths lecturers said disdainfully "huh- Maths taught by a Chemist" he was even less pleased when we told him that at least now it made sense. The ones I always hated were those "if it takes a 2 inch pipe 6 hours to fill a swimming pool how long will it take a 3 1/2 inch one to do the same when there is a 1 gallon an hour leak in the corner?" Apart from who cares my main reaction was fix the leak first. I failed O level maths 3 times but went on to get ONC & HNC Sciences & a 40+ year career in Medical Labs. I still don't consider myself any good at Maths but when it's related to the real world I can do it. @Lyn One of my past bosses (now a professor) was brilliant at his job but he couldn't navigate his way out of a paper bag, he was supposed to give a lecture at Southampton university once, he turned up in Portsmouth & of course no one had a clue why he was there!
Curmudgeonly point: How many 4 or 5 digit codes do you have to remember in daily life? Pin numbers, door codes, phone security etc. I can hold a finite number in my head (not sure how many, but 8 is close enough). If I try to add another , one falls out.
I can remember my ten digit internet banking number and my sixteen digit credit card number and also my eight digit bank account number. Apart from on about 3 days a year when my mind will go completely blank and I have to look them up. I can only manage 7 four digit pin numbers before one drops off the end. And even those I have the odd day when I just stand staring at the cash point/computer keyboard totally at a loss.
They used to tell you to have lots of different pin numbers and passwords but advice has changed now to have only a handful because if you have too many, you have to write them down and that is deemed to be a greater security risk.
I like maths But I've long since forgotten how to do the complicated stuff. I've not had much need to solve quadratic equations in life so my brain has filed it under 'pointless knowledge'. I expect it would come back to me if I read up on it again. On the other hand I can remember words to songs I've not heard in decades and all my parents' cars registration numbers. Why is that?
Gardening on the edge of Exmoor, in Devon
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
Embarrassing to myself, I should say. I think my maths and spelling talents spring from the same problems of 1) not slowing down enough to consider properly and 2) memory problems. I'm good at broad recall - events, faces, narratives, lexicons. I can tell you what side of the page a poem was on in a book I read five years ago. Or describe a farmhouse I once saw in a field ten summers ago.
Close up, fine tuned data or tasks I don't do well. I'm hopeless with specific dates, temporal things generally, the specifics of spelling (though I can now remember how to spell 'perennial' thanks to you all), statistical evaluations. I have a horrible habit of 'rounding up'. I think my brain processing tries to work too fast to work things out properly. The visual /memory bit of my brain that is supposed to remember, doesn't work very well, so when I look at the word "embarassing" the visual doesn't look wrong.
But I have great hearing, I'm strong and fit, create things artistic, have a ridiculously good musical memory (which drives me crazy), excellent spatiality, and am good at remembering names.
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I don't.
Curmudgeonly point:
How many 4 or 5 digit codes do you have to remember in daily life? Pin numbers, door codes, phone security etc.
I can hold a finite number in my head (not sure how many, but 8 is close enough). If I try to add another , one falls out.
My little grandson has just had IQ test, he’s in the top 2% so he tells us now that he’s genius 😀. On the other hand, he’s hopeless at spreading jam on his toast!
I never got a tick.
@Lyn One of my past bosses (now a professor) was brilliant at his job but he couldn't navigate his way out of a paper bag, he was supposed to give a lecture at Southampton university once, he turned up in Portsmouth & of course no one had a clue why he was there!
They used to tell you to have lots of different pin numbers and passwords but advice has changed now to have only a handful because if you have too many, you have to write them down and that is deemed to be a greater security risk.
I like maths
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”