[exikyut]

I would be very interested to hear about some examples of real-world contexts that have proven tricky. As much detail as possible is preferable.

Incidentally I describe my problems with math almost the exact same way - virtually nonexistent fundamental understanding, and so huge issues with abstracting out even the simplest real-world tasks. (My wake-up call was when I was basically just mashing buttons on my calculator one day when I realized I didn't know how to compute how much of X I could buy given that it was $Y per weight.)