Aphantasia and Mathematics
1 min readByAspen Thompson
I find myself at a bit of a loss or what my generation might call a skill issue. One of the strengths of aphants, is logical and conceptual reasoning. Many people with aphantasia find they are good at math. While I find that the sciences have always been a tad easier for me; math has eluded my grasp. Which I find frustrating because, science will always need math.
I believe my struggle is because, from a young age I was being told to process the equations and formulas visually. When I had the formula and a piece of paper it was easy, but mental math was insufferable. The concepts made sense, but I lacked the sufficient means to execute the algorithms mentally because my brain was trying to do what it couldn't, visualize. Any thoughts?
N
Neal White•recently•edited
My aphantasia wasn't much of an issue for me in school. I was even on my high school math team.
Here are a couple of my main techniques: for physics, I used memorization: the first thing I did on a test was to write down the formulas in the margins. I only memorized the basic formulas and would then derive any other formulas as needed. Yes, that does waste precious time, but I usually was able to get a passing grade. For history, I would write down what the teacher said in class. Writing it down embedded it in my mind, so I could regurgitate it on tests.
0