Is this possible, or am just making excuses for myself?
I don’t—thank goodness—have any problem with letters or words, but I invariably transpose numbers. When I dial the phone, I have to carefully say the number out loud as I’m doing it; same with writing out ZIP codes, or any numbers, for that matter.
Anyone else have this problem? How is this even possible?
You’re not alone. I frequently transpose numbers while writing them down, and even if I repeat out loud the number I still transpose or write down an entirely different number. I never do this with words or letters.
Sounds like one of the many variants of dyscalculia; more here
IIRC, dyscalculia is listed in the DSMIV-R’s learning disorder section 3.14.519. 
Well, every math teracher I’ve ever had can attest to that! So that summer I spent in summer school making up 8th-grade algebra wasn’t just because I was stupid and lazy?
I’ve often wondered if there is really an east/west or right/left dyslexia. I will tell people the wrong direction often enough that I wonder if the cause is brain-wiring related or if I’m just an idiot at times. (Please don’t answer that! I know the answer, but I’m in denial.)
I have a disconnect between hearing a number and seeing it. If you were to dictate a string of numbers to me, it would be incredibly difficult for me to write them down. I even have a hard time dialing a phone number if someone is telling it to me as I’m dialing. I need to hear the whole number and picture it in my mind in order to dial it correctly.
Oh, lordie, me too! When people leave me their phone numbers on my answering machine, it takes me about five playbacks before I can write the whole damn thing down!
Not trying to be mocking or anything but - this sounds, to me, like simple difficulty with math (which I’ve struggled with my entire life). I have practically no ‘sense’ of time, have never been able to really read maps, have horrid spatial skills, and still can’t do long division without a calculator, because the steps get all mucky and confusing. Is there an official ‘line’, where once someone’s difficulties cross that, it’s a “disorder”? Or is it like ADD has become, where any kid who has trouble with x in school is labelled as LD?
The dyslexic Jewish rapper greeting.
OY! ;j
And many’s the time that Eve, as a dyslexic atheist, has argued there no such thing as a dog.
One of my old boyfriends had the same problem. He kept asking me to do 96 with him.
Oh, I’m perfectly open the the possibility that I am just a complete and total idiot where numbers are concerned. But the fact that I invariably transpose them made me wonder if anyone else does that, too.
Oh, yes, and I did join DAM, “Mothers Against Dyslexia.”
Some mildly related tidbits from Jen the mediochre printshop proofreader* **:
When numbers are mistyped, it’s usually with a 3 instead of a 2 (or vice versa) and it seems to only happen with some people.
When a number is typed wrong in a phone number, it seems to usually be the last digit.
Another common mistake is when the last two numbers of the area code are mixed up.
The most commonly mis-typed things on business cards are normal words or common names, probably because when people see a name like Rogalzykovichsteinlinger, they consciously make an effort to spell it right since it can easily be spelt wrong.
Mistakes are more often in words than in numbers
I can almost always if people had much sleep by the amount of mistakes and type of mistakes they make.
The amount of mistakes made by everyone is surprisingly even, though the kinds of mistakes are slightly different.
*I proofread mostly business cards typed from copy that customers supply. There are about 10 different people whose things I proofread.
** Fight the temptation to tell me everything I mis-spelled in this post.
I’m like that with numbers. I hate numbers. I hate mathematics. Letters and words are fine though.
I can see your car once and I will probably remember the letters on your plates. I can see it every day for years, and will have no idea about the numeric part.
When I am using the touch pad on a phone or computer, I always seem to randomly confuse 3, 6, and 9.
I’m the same way, LoadedDog, but my confusion is with 4 and 5. They start with the same consonant sound and they’re right next to each other in sequence. I’m always mixing them up.
And I’ve always hated math, but this is odd: When I was in college, I had to take a remedial algebra course (roughly equivalent to Algebra 1 and 2 in high school, I guess) and I got the highest grade in the class on the final. But see, we were allowed to use calculators. I think my problem isn’t that I can’t grasp mathematical formulas—I think I’m actually pretty good at that—but that the numbers fuck me up. I could work an equation down to the point where all I had to do was figure out something like 27 divided by 9 and my brain would just freeze.
[Tired Old Graffiti]Dyslexics of the world UNTIE![/TOG]
And yet the caution I’ve heard (and practice) is that typos are more easily missed in numbers than in words, since we don’t see them as obvious errors, as in misspellings.
I have a good memory for numbers because, for some reason, my brain translates them into “words” composed of digits instead of letters. (I still remember the license plate numbers of co-workers from 15 years ago. Yes, I’m sick.) But I can also remember how to spell or pronounce an unfamiliar word or name better if it’s spelled for me so I can “see” it in my mind’s eye. BUT I also have the feeling that my brain is getting full, as ‘m having a harder time remembering NEW numbers. I still have to stop and think before dialing my parents’ winter number in Texas, even though they’ve had it for two years.
(The version of the joke I heard was about insomniac dyslexic agnostics, who stay up all night wondering if there really is a dog.)
But it’s not that so much . . . It’s, like, if you tell me the year “1946,” I will write “1496.” I have to really slow down and say it out loud.
Math dyslexia and dyscalculia aren’t necessarily the same thing. I understand how to do math – got through all my high-school math no problem – used to get to the answer in Geometry before the teacher often enough to be noticeable – scored 86th %ile on the math portion of the GRE –
And I can’t subtract one three-digit number from another without effing it up, and I need you to give me your phone number one. digit. at. a time.