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Comment by veb | Hacker News Reader

I hate myself. I can never answer questions like this, and I exhaust myself from trying so hard.

Throughout school, I was absolutely HOPELESS. I couldn't do anything when it came to basic math, except some algebra. These questions (even faced with the formula to solve it) still bugger my head. I tried to read books, get tutors, do everything to better myself (who ever heard of a computer guy who couldn't do math!).

I can easily write algorithms, do algebra, write complex programs, do anything on a computer but faced with a question like this my brain shuts down very quickly.

I stumbled across this one day... still not sure if I believe it's a thing... and that I have it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyscalculia

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Holy smokes, thank you, thank you, and thank you so much for posting this! I had no idea that this had a name called "Dyscalculia". I wonder if there is a way to medically verify if I actually have this condition. To this day, I cannot read an analog watch. I cannot do math in my hand, although I do perfectly fine on paper. For even simple calculations, like 23 + 45, I simply cannot keep both numbers in my head. It is truly a curse. I actually physically get dizzy when I'm asked to perform computations. When I was in high school, I still played games like "Number Munchers", asking myself.. "What is wrong with me?", despite the fact that I had successfully made it to calculus and maintained a very high GPA.

It is amazing then, that I somehow have managed to complete both an undergraduate and Master's degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering. I compensated for my lack of numerical ability by heavily relating on calculators throughout my college education. In fact, one of the reasons I pursued computers in the first place is because I recognized that I could survive, and hence, fake it, by offloading such "trivial" computations to a machine.

Many standardized tests, such as the GRE, don't allow calculators unfortunately.

It is a thing, and I have it.

May I ask how you were able to get it diagnosed? Are there specialists that one can see to identify this? What is the testing procedure?

I was diagnosed in college. My adviser suspected something was wrong and suggested I see a specialist. It's been more than 20 years, so I'm a little hazy on the details - but from what I remember, the tests mostly involved reasoning and abstraction.

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