An incident at work today made me think... Really, is there a reason why my maths is exceptionally poor?? I mean, I can never do any form of calculations for my life without actually putting my fingers in front of me and adding and subtracting physically!!! And without a calculator I am paralyzed.

I'm sure I have this...

Dyscalculia

Dysculculia (difficulty in learning or comprehending mathematics) was originally identified in case studies of patients who suffered specific arithmetic disabilities as a result of damage to specific regions of the brain. Recent research suggests that dyscalculia can also occur developmentally, as a genetically-linked learning disability which affects a person's ability to understand, remember, and/or manipulate numbers and/or number facts (e.g. the multiplication tables). The term is often used to refer specifically to the inability to perform arithmetic operations, but is defined by some educational professionals and cognitive psychologists as a more fundamental inability to conceptualize numbers as abstract concepts of comparative quantities (a deficit in "number sense"[1]). Those who argue for this more constrained definition of dyscalculia sometimes prefer to use the technical term Arithmetic Difficulties (AD) to refer to calculation and number memory deficits.

Dyscalculia is a lesser known disability, similar and potentially related to dyslexia and Developmental Dyspraxia. Dyscalculia occurs in people across the whole IQ range, and sufferers often, but not always, also have difficulties with time, measurement, and spatial reasoning. Current estimates suggest it may affect about 5% of the population. Although some researchers believe that dyscalculia necessarily implies mathematical reasoning difficulties as well as difficulties with arithmetic operations, there is evidence (especially from brain damaged patients) that arithmetic (e.g. calculation and number fact memory) and mathematical (abstract reasoning with numbers) abilities can be dissociated. That is (some researchers argue), an individual might suffer arithmetic difficulties (or dyscalculia), with no impairment of, or even giftedness in, abstract mathematical reasoning abilities.

The word dyscalculia comes from Greek and Latin which means: "counting badly". The prefix "dys" comes from Greek and means "badly". "Calculia" comes from the Latin "calculare", which means "to count". That word "calculare" again comes from "calculus", which means "pebble" or one of the counters on an abacus.

Possible Symptoms

- Frequent difficulties with arithmetic, confusing the signs: +, −, ÷ and ×.

- Inability to tell which of two numbers is the larger.

- Reliance on 'counting-on' strategies, e.g., using fingers, rather than any more efficient mental arithmetic strategies.

- Difficulty with everyday tasks like checking change and reading analog clocks.

- Inability to comprehend financial planning or budgeting, sometimes even at a basic level; for example, estimating the cost of the items in a shopping basket or balancing a checkbook.

- Difficulty with times-tables, mental arithmetic, etc.

- May do fairly well in subjects such as science and geometry, which require logic rather than formulas, until a higher level requiring calculations is needed.

- Difficulty with conceptualizing time and judging the passing of time.

- Problems differentiating between left and right.

- Having a poor sense of direction (i.e., north, south, east, and west), potentially even with a compass.

- Difficulty navigating or mentally "turning" the map to face the current direction rather than the common North=Top usage.

- Having difficulty mentally estimating the measurement of an object or distance (e.g., whether something is 10 or 20 feet away).

- Inability to grasp and remember mathematical concepts, rules, formulae, and sequences.

- Difficulty keeping score during games.

- Difficulty with games such as poker with more flexible rules for scoring. - Difficulty in activities requiring sequential processing, from the physical (such as dance steps) to the abstract (reading, writing and signaling things in the right order). May have trouble even with a calculator due to difficulties in the process of feeding in variables.

- The condition may lead in extreme cases to a phobia of mathematics and mathematical devices.

So am I dysculculia?

Maybe I should get myself an independent assessment to find out.