Dreaming About Math - How It Helps Me Solve Problems

[Square1]

I find it strange that I would experience this and that I would be the one out of everyone to start asking around since I've mentioned in previous posts that I am rather math handicapped...

Yea. So in late elementary and early junior high was the first time this happened. I would start dreaming about math problems on the topic of recent material. Even back then when I hated math I remember the instances when I did dream about it, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it because my head was so clear to think about things unlike during the day where is just so difficult to focus on the stuff.

I still sometimes dream about math but in more detail than I used to. I used to just think about subjects in my sleep, now I THINK (from what I can remember from the dreams :) ) I am beginning to try and solve problems as supposed to just thinking about concepts.

I've also noticed that sometimes, if I struggle with s problem, even for an hour because I am at a silly roadblock of some sort that I can't immediately see, the moment I climb into bed my mind also clears. I can visualize my paper so well and step by step go through a problem much more calmly and the result is that I solve it in a minute, compared to the hour I just spent on it (this just happened yesterday and so it gave me the push to post about it here lol )

Im sure there are many like me here in some regard. What have you learned from this behaviour? Has it helped you figure out what kind of learning works good/bad? Share what you can!

 

[Li(n)]

This has happened to me before , strange new symbols and logic would be introduced into my dreams , often I try to remember but I seldom succeed at it.

 

[jhae2.718]

I proved Fermat's Last Theorem in my sleep but the margin was too small.

 

[EnergyHobo]

That sort of thing used to happen to me all the time until I took an arrow in the knee...

 

[Jamma]

This happens to me a lot- it often keeps me awake if I have a very tantalising maths problem to solve. But then when I try and write down what I've just been thinking in bed I usually realize that what I'd just been thinking makes absolutely no sense.

 

[Deveno]

i dreamed the other night that everyone i knew was an anti-symmetric matrix. i kept warning them that their diagonals were all 0, but they paid me no heed.

 

[micromass]

i dreamed the other night that everyone i knew was an anti-symmetric matrix. i kept warning them that their diagonals were all 0, but they paid me no heed.

That's a skewed vision of reality

 

[RadiantL]

I wish I could dream about math, sounds really fun haha

 

[clanijos]

I like this comment very very much:

I proved Fermat's Last Theorem in my sleep but the margin was too small.

Elliptic curves man, crazy stuff to dream about.

 

[Mathguy15]

I proved Fermat's Last Theorem in my sleep but the margin was too small.

I see what you did there.

 

[Samuelb88]

I dreamed that my girlfriend and I got into a huge argument because she was claiming closed intervals in R weren't compact.

 

[micromass]

I dreamed that my girlfriend and I got into a huge argument because she was claiming closed intervals in R weren't compact.

Did you ask her what topology she worked with??

 

[clanijos]

Did you ask her what topology she worked with??

^Brilliant! I like it^

Also, +1 for having a girlfriend with whom it is not unreasonable to talk about math!

 

[QuarkCharmer]

I wish I could dream about math, sounds really fun haha

I used to be an adventurer like you...

 

[radou]

^Brilliant! I like it^

Also, +1 for having a girlfriend with whom it is not unreasonable to talk about math!

It was still a dream.

 

[PatrickPowers]

I dreamed about math in graduate school a few times but it was always repetitive attempts to apply the same dumb, wrong techniques.