Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi just wondering if theres anyone else here obsessed with numbers, or have a very good memory for them. I remember all the mountain heights in wales in meters, plus loads of figures for population, area etc. its quite scary really, and nobody knows how vast my knowledge is...
Tree3 is so big, if you tried to hold all the information within your head, it would turn into a black hole. Graham's number isn't quite so big but if you converted all matter in the universe into pen and ink, there wouldn't be enough to write it down.
Completely useless facts which have no bearing on real life!
I'm good at maths. Numbers are cool - are life, in fact.
Matt, There is a condition common amongst Autists called Arithmomania, which in my case is simply compulsive counting; many members here do it. I guess it is in some way related to what you describe. I count up to 100 and then backwards to zero... again and again and again. I think it is comfort through repeition, as is stimming. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmomania. It's also related to OCD.
We have a fellow poster on the forum living with this condition who goes under the name of 'Number', he could well be along shortly.
Ben
I'm terrible at maths, so not too much. I think I have a thing about higher numbers, which when I play some video games causes me some interest to get the numbers to keep going up.
But it's common for autistic people to have your obsession, yes.
There's a famous case of autistic twins in the '60s (check out Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat) who were savants. They could "see" numbers. If a box of matches fell on the floor, for example, they could immediately know exactly how many fell on the ground.