When I think of numbers or dates I have always seen them as part of a 3D line around me. This includes numbers, days, months and years.
For example this is the line I see for numbers.
It is difficult to draw in two dimensions. 12-20 goes off into the distance and 20-30 curves around and up. I have seen it this way as long as I can remember.
I have never mentioned it to anyone, because I thought everyone did the same . However, a few weeks ago I was talking with my wife about the first time I came to Japan in 1993, and she asked me how long ago it was. This happens every time I talk about dates. I had always assumed it was because she was brought up on the Japanese year system and had little reference to western dates. I explained to her about the line I see when I think about numbers and dates and she looked at me as if I had fallen out of my tree. I was quite surprised to find that she has no such line and can’t understand the way I see it.
Today I watched a documentary from 2004 (how many years ago?) about something called synesthesia. It is a condition where people see letters or numbers as colours or even tastes. Reseachers think it is caused by two senses overlapping and producing unusual responses.
And lo, in the documentary was a man who saw his numbers the same way I do. I had never heard of this before and I jumped onto the net and on searched around and the first image I found was this:
It was first noted by Francis Galton in a 1881 book called ‘The Visions of Sane Persons.’ People who see numbers and dates this way have a crossing point between numerical and spatial thought.
Some researchers also think that we all once mixed up our senses, and the different range of sensory input could have stimulated language production - an essential ingredient of language is abstract thought.
Apparently it is quite rare and probably genetic. Does anyone out there in Chiff land experience the same?
Researchers think that everyone has, or had, the ability to mix senses.
They also think that most people lost it because it had little use when we could express the world through language.
Several famous musicians, artists and writers such as David Hockey are believed to have synesthesia.
The colour sense mix looks more fun than the numbers.
That’s very interesting. I do understand your diagram.
They don’t wrap around me though.
However, doing math is a very visual process for me. For instance, if I am counting out six in my head, I use dots, as on a domino. (3 rows of 2)
Five is either 2 dots over 3 dots, or 4 corner dots with 1 in the middle. This comes from early elementary math, I think. Perhaps I’ve never progressed.
To process dates, eg, to remember when an event occurred, I do tend to string the numbers out by tens in a visual time line with the past going left and the future going right. Another vestige of early math. (also, my line doesn’t hop from 10 to 10…it stays level.)
(but I used to have to wind up and say the alphabet by rote in order to put letters in the right order too, so I guess I cling to many primitive thought processes.)
I’ve always assumed that people who were “good” at math–i.e., those capable of manipulating numbers as natively and comfortably as I feel managing letters–could bypass this clunky visual part and instinctively work with the values more directly.
I have always visualized dates in a manner similar to Mukade. I also visualize math problems, but not nearly as well. They say that cosmologists like Einstein, Hawking, and many of the real brains out there do see in very detailed pictures, even to the point of “seeing” how complex equations work out. The visualization part apparently works very well for them, not so well for us common folk.
Yep, I’m also wondering that. Is there some mathematical correlation? Maybe some theory or principle that makes 12 different? After all, 2 different persons had 12 as one of their diagrams’ nodes. And 10. Plus they both had similar curvature from 0 to 10 to 12
If it were purely subjective, then wouldn’t each person’s diagram and visualisation be different? Wouldn’t nodes (if any) fall on different numbers?
In my teaching of negative numbers in beginning algebra, the concept of a number line was used. Zero was in the center of the line; the negative numbers progressed off to the left; the positive progressed to the right. The number line uses both numerical and spatial concepts in order to visualize what is otherwise difficult for many students to do with abstract numerical concepts alone. Although the simple number line was not thought of to be curved or wiggly, degrees of arc is one numerical concept that is hard to think about without a spatial orientation in a circle.
Some of us I would guess possess unusual gifts, but these may be hard to understand or describe. I have always been able to visualize problems in my mind. I can close my eyes and work on my car. I can’t work equations this way, but for problems that are mechanical, which can be spatially conceived, I seem to be able to manipulate the pieces in my mind in three dimensions. This skill is very useful for solving certain types of problems. On the other hand, I can’t remember detail very well. I always score poorly on reading comprehension tests that require me to read a passage and then answer questions about what I had just read. I was able to get through college by cramming for tests, but, if the truth was known, a lot of the knowledge didn’t stay with me that long, I’m sorry to say. Gifts and deficiencies is what I have had to work with throughout my life. Knowing what my skills are, I have tried to capitalize on my strengths.
I don’t got it but I do like telling stories about numbers when I add them (like when I’m keeping score in a game of spades.) And our mileage reimbursement is now 50.5 cents and the chart that I made for that has a pattern to the numbers that I find particularly pleasing. Patterns in numbers are beautiful.
I don’t see numbers in any kind of line, but when I think of dates, I see a calendar page. The days I have to work are grey. Days off are a bright glowing white. Vacation days are a very light glowing aqua.
And when I win the lottery, that day will be a supernova!
People who see numbers and dates this way have a crossing point between numerical and spatial thought.
