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Comment by iglio | Hacker News Reader

I am one of those people that cannot memorise times tables.

That hasn’t stopped me getting a degree in computer science, and working for a FANG since I graduated nearly 10 years ago as a software engineer. I have provided value.

I can do just fine in the real world without having memorised the times tables.

Different people have their heads wired differently. I was lucky enough to be in a state school that had a great learning support program, and some teachers that saw potential in me despite struggling with some conventionally trivial aspects of education.

The solution after diagnosis[1]? Just give me a calculator (I was allowed to use one in the normally “non calculator” exams). And in a pinch, I can still do it by hand but slowly. I often don’t just “know” the result, and that’s something I’m fine with not being “fixed” about me.

[1] https://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/dyscalculia/how-can-i-identif...

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> I am one of those people that cannot memorise times tables.

Have you actually tried that? Just rote-learning it as a chant or using any other method? Or by copying it down by hand several times?

Memorization is a trainable skill, and it's often overlooked in the US.

> I can do just fine in the real world without having memorised the times tables.

You can live just fine without long multiplication, division, and even basic math, physics or chemistry. You can even get university degrees. It's absolutely true.

It's not the question of necessity.

The way I learned it was by keeping an actual printed table handy to look at during multiplication problems. For me at least, that didn't take long and never required memorizing "for its own sake" -- I don't know if that'd generalize, since I don't know of anyone else going that way.

Learning by chant or whatever just seemed super boring (and prone to learning sequential access rather than as random access).

The same principle helped for touch typing and dvorak: tape a layout card to your screen at first.

Back when I was at school, we had the multiplication table printed on the back cover of all students' workbooks. After a while, I just remembered it.

We also had mnemonic chants for some non-trivial entries.

I'm not iglio but I also have issues with memorization in general, despite effort. Probably due to a head injury I got as a child, but hard to really be sure.

I work around it the same way in practice; having access to google so I can look things up is really helpful. I can do the actual work on paper if I have access to formulas or reference materials, but I've forgotten things like long division as many times as I've learned them, and I was never able to memorize times tables successfully. Naturally this is a hindrance to classwork - I had one great math teacher who recognized that memorization was a problem and he allowed me to have a reference book of formulas during my finals so I was able to pass with no issues since I was able to do the math, but most other uni courses were a huge challenge. Courses where you're allowed to use a calculator were great in comparison.

My memory was not great either. It's still not that great, so I'm learning Chinese to train it (memorizing Hanzi characters helps).

For me it's outlandish that somebody can forget long division. I literally haven't done it in 20 years, but I've just tried it and I can do it fine.

I guess not using calculator at school helped a lot. My math and physics classes all had arithmetic that could be done mentally, or occasionally on a piece of paper.

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