Ask someone with Asperger's syndrome.

[Rev. Rye]

Do you think that the syndrome has given you any special abilities, if so, would you like to tell what they are?

Nothing beyond having really good rote memory and being good with maths and coding and stuff. If by your question, you mean I can do such things as calculate really large numbers in my head so easily or recite the first 1000 decimal digits of the Pi number off by heart, forwards and then backwards, then obviously no. The majority of people on the autism spectrum, contrary to popular belief, aren't anything like Rain Man. These people, referred to as savants, are rather really, really rare. I think you can even count them with your hands.

The closest thing to special ability is that I'm a voracious reader and I can remember a lot of things most people wouldn't even think about. That said, even that impresses a lot of people to the point I've called it my "mutant power." Also, one of the things I've learned is that there's no point in memorising 1000 digits of pi. The amount of decimal places stored in your calculator is more than sufficient for most earthly purposes. You only need about 11 digits to measure the earth's circumference to a precision of a millimeter. To calculate a circle the size of the known universe to the precision of a quark, how many digits would you think you need? 45. 39 if you're content to limit yourself to the precision of a hydrogen atom. And if you want the precision of a Planck Length? It's 62.


There is no point in memorising more digits. I only remember 3.14159265 and really, going beyond 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510582097494459 is literally more than anyone will ever need. Someone managed to do it to 22 trillion digits in 2016, yet there has been no point whatsoever in going further since Abraham Sharp calculated it to 71 digits in 1699.

Honestly, I'm more a Fibonacci numbers sort of guy. I can recall once hearing someone bring up the Fibonacci sequence at work and just reciting the numbers up to 2584. Then again, that's only 18 numbers, and you just add up the last two you remember saying. That's the beauty of it.