How does your mind work?

[MarillionFan]

I was teaching the kids how to do their times tables after Mrs MF (who is numerically dyslexic) had to buy a book by Carol Vorderman on number tips & tricks. After a few sessions of playing games, by daughter jumped into the top group having been struggling before.

I then attempted to teach her some more advanced ways of doing maths and at that point hit a block. The way she is being taught was so alien to me I literally could not fathom what the teacher was teaching (some kind of line, with having to jump the number?). Show the working out etc. I remember I was constantly down graded at school for never showing the working out, I just always wrote the answer down.

I then explained to her that 5 was a circle. Three a green triangle etc & that you could visually move these around in your head by closing your eyes & rearranging the pattern. Everyone in the room (including the grandparents looked at me like I was a loon, but no-one questioned it further as I am well known for mental arithmetic)

I also realised that when problem solving / programming / checking logic I close my eyes, I visualise a square & then make everything fit. If it doesn't fit, then it's either wrong, or requires additional smaller squares of logic to complete & I carry on until I have a solution(s). I've never noticed it before, but I had a colleague say out in a meeting last week 'Oh crap, I hate when you do this'. Turns out I close my eyes when people are talking to me about business requirements or technical architecture before giving the solution.

Numbers are a visual representation that humans write down so everyone recognises them, but mentally how do you see them?

[MarillionFan]

Interestingly came across this, Synesthesia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[mudskipper]

Nope. I just have a subconscious running commentary in my head (it was the voices, m'lud). When coding I go into a sort of meditative state and it takes over. That's why constant interruptions do my nut in. Every time the PM pings me an IM, I lose it, post on CUK for a bit (she IMs me a lot!) then have to find the zone again. Music helps, although I don't actively listen to it, it just drowns out the crap.

I'm hopeless with names, and have recently tried the visualisation technique where you picture something on the person related to the name - and that seems to work, although I suspect it's more by consciously committing the name to memory than actually by picturing Brian Cox with two willies.

[xoggoth]

I'm hopeless with names

Remember passwords, bank account numbers etc but not names. I think that's largely because I remember things best if I write them down. Did lots of course notes at uni but hardly ever read them, just making them was the important bit.

[mudskipper]

Remember passwords, bank account numbers etc but not names. I think that's largely because I remember things best if I write them down. Did lots of course notes at uni but hardly ever read them, just making them was the important bit.

I did my entire OU degree without making any notes (except in the first tutorial of the first module which was about the importance of taking notes). I was always very impressed by the people who turned up with folders, coloured post-it markers and dividers. My course materials were pretty chaotic.

[Pondlife]

I find that the problem is that the image translators work for the construct program.

[suityou01]

42

[sasguru]

Turns out I close my eyes when people are talking to me about business requirements or technical architecture before giving the solution.

I bet your lips move when you read, too.

[mudskipper]

Do you ever mutter to yourself? I do find myself doing it now and then...

[MarillionFan]

Do you ever mutter to yourself? I do find myself doing it now and then...

It's the only time I get any sense