Why are humans slow at math while being great at image processing?

Compared to computers, humans are definitely slower in mathematics, but humans can usually recognise images effortlessly, unlike computers (it takes computers huge hardware and lots of images to train them to recognise simple digits, unlike humans, for example).

Contrary to popular belief, human brain does not behave like a computer. Brain consists of massive interconnected network of neurons. This is how a brain would look like:

Computer on the other hand consists of a series of chips which can mainly do digital calculations. The inside of a processing unit in a computer would look something like:

Brain acts more like an analog super computer (all inter connections and signals are all analog). Whereas computers are purely digital in nature. They convert even analog/continuous variables into digital equivalents for processing. As a result computers are better at processing discrete information like arithmetic. Brain on the other hand can handle massive amount of connected analogous data like speech, visions/video etc. at the same time language, mathematics, advanced logic are all tougher for brains (human or otherwise) to process.

PS: Although artificial neural networks have started by emulating neural networks in the brain, they are no where near how brain actually works.

Originally poster on Quora here: https://www.quora.com/Why-are-humans-slow-at-math-while-being-great-at-image-processing/answer/Gopi-Suvanam