"But Dad Isn't a Lady"

Meredith recently switched groups in her school.  She was very anxious about this change for the first couple of weeks, afraid that the group would be too hard for her.

One morning, however, Meredith said that she was doing better in her group than she thought.  Excitedly, she asked me to give her two numbers.  "Why," I ask.  "Just give me two numbers...two big numbers," she insisted.

After giving her two numbers that met her satisfaction, she began doing mental math and mumbling this and that.  Finally, she sputtered out the answer and was very satisfied with herself.

"But what were you solving?  What was the problem?"  It took a number of times going back and forth for Meredith to articulate what exactly it was that she was doing in her mind.  I finally ascertained it was the Pythagorean Theorem.

So often, Meredith doesn't realize that people can't follow her thoughts and she gets irritated with the fact that she has to explain things to people.  Sometimes, she'll only say three words and trail off into silence, leaving the listener waiting for the rest of her thought.  Then when you ask her what she was saying, she'll say, "Didn't I say that out loud?" and laugh at herself.

I relayed to the Head of School that Meredith was finally feeling very confident in her new group and was very excited about the higher level math.  It was surprising, although not unexpected, that higher level math was almost easier for Meredith than easier math.  Apparently this is not uncommon for visual thinkers like Meredith who thrive on complexity.  The Head of School asked me to remind him what my husband did for a living and after I told him that he manages complex reverse logistics operations, he told me that some day Meredith will be a powerful young lady like her Dad.

Guess what Meredith said in all seriousness after I told her this?  "But Mom, Dad isn't a lady."  Language processing issue: check!

Math in Characters

I finally got around to reading Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet.  Daniel is a well-known autistic savant and synesthete--a savant unique in his abilities to describe to others how he thinks.  In his book, he describes how numbers have always been a very important part of his life.  He explains that he experiences each number as having shape, color, emotion, and personality.  He also explained that he found algebra difficult because for him, letters do not elicit the synesthetic response as numbers. 

Because I know Meredith's numbers are characters (see this post), I asked her if they caused her any difficulty with math problems.  She told me, chuckling, that when doing subtraction one of the numbers is "taken away" to "juvie" (i.e., juvenile jail).

I know that algebra tends to be difficult for visual thinkers and asked her what happens when letters are introduced to math problems.  She said that her letters are characters, too.  The letter a, for instance, is a girl (in the shape of "A") wearing a fancy A-line dress.  The letter x is a criminal. 

She said that actually, Merebith is doing diagnostics on an algebra equation at the moment.  She is trying to figure out how Meredith solved a really long algebra equation when she had trouble solving a very short one.  Chuckling again, Meredith said that Merebith and Dogot are playing good cop, bad cop with the numbers in the equation.  She said it's like an old black and white detective movie where the police question the suspects: "Where were you at 12:00 yesterday..."

Merebith is shining a bright light on the suspects.  They first questioned number two, who is actually a cloud.  But because he could only sputter out thunder and lightening trying to answer their questions, they let him go.  Dogot is wearing the police hat he took out from his extensive hat collection and is using this really funny, deep robot talk, trying hard to act like a bad cop.

So I suppose it is safe to say that because Meredith's numbers are characters and each equation has a storyline factors into why Meredith often finds learning math frustrating, despite her teacher's response that she has a lot of potential in math.  I imagine that Meredith is trying to reconcile how math is "supposed to work" with how Merebith diagnoses how math works.

I'm really looking forward to reading Daniel Tammet's newest book: Embracing the Wide Sky.