I do have poor working memory and I did struggle with algebra, especially with copying wrong sign from row to row and things like that.
But I did make paper sort of my working memory and when doing algebra I felt that I was just the very resource limited CPU that executed the instructions from paper-memory.
Algebra always made me feel like I was doing some mindfull exercise where I had to empty my mind, follow the paper script and hope I didn't mess anything while switching from row to row of calculations.
Even today, as a programmer, I struggle to remember class or function names, I just empty my mind and am really good at searching stuff in code.
I read this paragraph in a paper on ADHD and learning disabilities literally after replying to a comment above yours...
> There is also evidence of domain-specific cognitive deficits that contribute to specific learning-related disabilities. For example, phonological processing difficulties have been found in children with poor reading performance, whether or not they also exhibited problems with ADHD symptoms or math, but not in children with deficits in ADHD symptoms or math only. Similarly, both with and without a reading deficit, children with ADHD symptoms exhibit significantly impaired object naming and behavioral inhibition, and math-disabled groups demonstrate visuospatial and numerical processing deficits, while those with only reading problems sometimes do not.
There's significant co-morbidity between learning disorders and ADHD, and despite dyscalculia being as common as dyslexia (~3-7% of the population) it's a lot less well-known, isn't as frequently diagnosed and there are fewer tools to help people with it. It would be very possible to have both ADHA and dyscalculia, given you used symptoms listed for both that are almost word-for-word identical with those in the paper...
I had no problem with reading or abstract thinking or grasping mathematical concepts.
My problem was that oftentimes I would screw up calculations for a math problem and only get 7/10 score on it (the reasoning was mostly right, but the answer was not).
But I did make paper sort of my working memory and when doing algebra I felt that I was just the very resource limited CPU that executed the instructions from paper-memory.
Algebra always made me feel like I was doing some mindfull exercise where I had to empty my mind, follow the paper script and hope I didn't mess anything while switching from row to row of calculations.
Even today, as a programmer, I struggle to remember class or function names, I just empty my mind and am really good at searching stuff in code.