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There is such breathtaking depth & heartbreaking beauty in this ancient art form. How ironic that people dismiss mathematics as the antithesis of creativity. They are missing out on an art form older than any book, more profound than any poem, and more abstract than any abstract.

... should at all times be engaged in the process— having ideas, not having ideas, discovering patterns, making conjectures, constructing examples & counterexamples, devising arguments & critiquing each other’s work. Specific techniques & methods will arise naturally out of thisprocess, as they did historically: not isolated from, but organically connected to & as an outgrowth of, their problem-background.

Mathematics is and always has been about ideas, and a valuable idea transcends the symbols with which you choose to represent it.

Mathematics is the music of reason. To do mathematics is to engage in an act of discovery & conjecture, intuition & inspiration;to be in a state of confusion— not because it makes no sense to you, but because you gave it sense & you still don’t understand what your creation is up to; to have a breakthrough idea; to be frustrated as an artist; to be awed & overwhelmed by an almost painful beauty; to be alive, damn it.

If everyone were exposed to mathematics in its natural state, with all
the challenging fun and surprises that that entails, I think we would
see a dramatic change both in the attitude of students toward
mathematics, and in our conception of what it means to be “good at
math.”

he first thing to understand is that mathematics is an art. The difference between math & the other arts, such as music and painting, is that our culture does not recognize it as such. ... Mathematics is the purest of the arts, as well as the most
misunderstood.

A normal person’s degree of motivation is based on various desires or drives (the need for approval, affection or personal gain & the desire to compete, succeed, conform & imitate). Autistics does not seem to have these drives. Aspergers often have a high degree of motivation & achievement in their specific area of interest, but often have poor concentration in other areas.

The natural interest in the sensation of movement can be used to help them learn various motor actions. The approach is to physically move their limbs or fingers through the activity so
that they can learns from kinaesthetic cues. Some have specific verbal & visual memory difficulties. While long term memory may be good, memory for recent events can be poor.

Autistics may therefore need a more detailed task analysis of the individual stages or components of an activity than others.

Autistics are more relaxed when they know what is going to happen next because they find unpredictability & chaos unbearable. You can help by providing a simple schedule of the sequence of activities expected over a given time.

Autistic who is distressed can echo a phrase or even a whole conversation that may have occurred some time ago in association with a similar emotion but have no relevance to the present context. It is important not to listen to the words but to recognize that they are having problems with an accurate verbal description of their feelings.

Adults who acquire near normal levels of verbal comprehension unfortunately have a tendency to make a literal interpretation of what someone says. Sarcasm should also be avoided as this can cause confusion as to what you really mean.

The initial impression of autistic is that they are indifferent to the emotions of others. Indeed they do have difficulty in interpreting emotional cues given in facial expression, gestures, posture or voice. However, it is not true to say that they are totally indifferent, as they may become very distressed by the emotional behavior of other people.