Do you Get It?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

Bah. The board ate my extensive reply.

Suffice to say that there is nothing magical about 2.3 and 0.009134 - I simply dumped the data into a piece of modelling software and those where the numbers that made the formula do its job. Different numbers would have given a (more) inaccurate model.

And “raising to the power”? Well 3 times 3 can also be written 3[sup]2[/sup]. Similarly 3[sup]4[/sup] = 3 x 3 x 3 x 3.

And 3[sup]2.3[/sup] or 3[sup]-0.5[/sup]? Just type it out on the calculator and see what you get. What? Ah shuddup and eat ya greens.

You don’t really want to know do you…? Beyond noting that 3[sup]2.3[/sup] is bigger than 3[sup]2[/sup] but smaller than 3[sup]3[/sup]?

::Evil grin::

pan

42

I get Math, now. It’s clicked.
Back in high school and early college, I haad the proverbial mental block, and had to be tutored in math to maintain an A average. There was nothing more confusing than math.
Now, though, out in the big bad convoluted world, I have come to appreciate the simplicity and absoluteness of math. How many other things, besides death and taxes, can you really count on?

One thing I pointedly don’t get, which is actually math-related, is friggin pregnancy.
I don’t see how they calculate the due date, how on earth they count from the last period to determine conception, even though
you might be counted as 2 weeks pregnant before you really ever conceive, etc.
I spent most of my sister’s baby shower listening to teenage cousins,
“What don’t you understand about pregnancy being 9 months and 40 weeks? What is so hard about this? AAAArrrrgggghhh!”
It still didn’t click. The math just doesn’t add up, consarn it!
If I ever get pregnant, I’m gonna have a little talk with the doc about calculating gestation time in a way that mskes SENSE, fercryinoutloud!

43

Directions and maps, no problem. I have excellent direction sense – I almost always know which way is north. I thought the direction sense might be related to sun position or something, but I’ve still got it at night and in deep canyons in the wilderness. Maybe it’s magnetic – who knows. I totally get maps, and automatically do all the spatial relations necessary to place myself. BTW, here’s a link to some great map collections: http://www.colorado.edu/geography/virtdept/resources/map_libs/map_libs.htm

Math, I’m not so good at. I can get by, but have neglected to learn some fairly easy stuff, like algebra. I could probably pick it up: the math I do know, like binary, hex and octal, comes pretty easy. I just haven’t put in the effort – no real need to yet.

Most other stuff I get quickly, like on first exposure. My learning capability seems to have not shut off (yet), even though I’m over 40. This works out well, since I’m constantly having to fix complex equipment I’ve never worked on before.

The only thing that I remember having a ‘click’ on was art. It took a while to figure out that ‘modern’ art was supposed to evoke feelings in the viewer that could not necessarily be defined by the artist. In other words, the ‘art’ part was separate from the content somehow. I still don’t like most modern art, but I think I get it now.

44

A major click moment for me was getting logic problems. While studying for the GRE I did those practice problems over and over and it was like banging my head against the wall. But then at one point they just Made Sense. I aced that part of the exam and now have another useless skill to file away.

I’ve always been good with maps and orientation, with one major exception: my grandmother’s town. At some point as a child I got it in my head that north was south and nothing, not even the rising and setting of the sun, could shake that idea out of my brain. I was constantly lost in that town, utterly unable to find my way around. Finally, a couple of years ago, I found a city map and walked around the area muttering to myself “this is north, this is south”, etc. It worked, but I’m sure the neighbors are wondering who that strange woman was wandering around talking to herself. Not a click moment, though. More like a slow grinding of gears as I changed my internal orientation.

riv

45

I’m good at reading maps, but for some reason I have a lot of trouble processing directions given to me verbally. I absolutely hate being in a pub, restaurant etc where I don’t know where the toilets are and have to rely on someone telling me “downstairs, turn right etc”.

Things I don’t understand why other people can’t get: the difference between “its” and “it’s”, “your” and “you’re”, etc. It seems incredibly basic to me.

46

I get geometry, which a lot of my classmates at the time just couldn’t, and I like physics - but the one thing I have never been able to properly wrap my mind around is that at the top of a hill, different cars in a connected rollercoaster can be going different velocities. They’re connected! All I know is that you’re supposed to ride in the back. =)

Oh, and my head threatens to explode when I think about how the data on my hard drive actually isn’t 1s and 0s, but rather metal filings that are aligned this way and that.

47

I’m not good at verbal directions either. I have to translate them into a little pictoral model inside my head. I can’t give verbal directions either. I can either point to the thing as the crow flies, “It’s over there”, or I have to run a virtual video of the journey inside my head.

Maps? Fantabulosa. Maps are a very simple model. When navigating, I imagine a little dot on the map representing the car, and envisage it beetling along the lines of the road.

I’m good at figuring out foreign languages, but very shy about speaking them.

I’m still not terribly good at catching a ball, but I’m almost nearly good at kicking one. Passing accuracy is good, but I need to work on power and such like. I can sort of remember when I worked out what part of the foot to use to make the ball do something vaguely like what I wanted. I shall hopefully be signing for Leicester City in time for next season…

48

I’m not good at math at all.

But English and grammar I am. I know the feeling of not understanding why someone else can’t get it when it seems so obvious. The same thing with French. It seems so easy to me, yet others have trouble, and it puzzles me. I am also good at reading and folding maps.

49

I am not a doctor, or a woman, so please take the following with a grain of salt.

Generally speaking, that is, MOST of the time for MOST women, a new egg is released from the ovaries a certain number of days after each period. The egg only hangs around for a short period, and sperm only survive a short period, so MOST conceptions occur within a span of a few days, and this span falls a certain number of days after your period.

Therefore, the doctor assumes you got pregnant a certain number of days after your last period, give or take a couple of days, and figures from there. Most of the time, the answer is fairly close.

However, you can’t put too much trust in the resulting date, for at least two reasons. First, although the calculation will tell you roughly when you probably got pregnant, it is not always right. This calculation of the date of maximum fertility is what the rythym method of birth control is based on, and because of variations between women, and variations for the same woman from month to month, the rythym method is notoriously unreliable.

Secondly, various things can change just how long after you get pregnant the baby will decide to be born. There are several things that might cause a baby to come early, and I suppose their are a few things that might slow it down a little.

Still, the calculation gives you a date to make plans with, so long as you remember to include a fudge factor.

50

I cant read maps either. I have absolutely no inborne sense of direction. Sometimes i get lost in my town of 9000. Not lost, really, but I just get turned around VERY easily. The thought of going anywhere on the highway by myself…ohhh…<<shudder>>

51

My big “click” moment was digital electronics (you know, logic gates, that kind of stuff). It wasn’t like learning it, it was like remembering stuff I didn’t know I knew. I had that same experience of “what are the rest of you seeing that I’m missing that is making this so hard for you?”, because I couldn’t believe that anyone could not understand something so obvious.

Excellent with maps, excellent sense of direction, excellent giving verbal directions (I have the whole scene I’m giving directions for visualized in front of me), not great with math, and not good at following verbal directions; just give me the address and let me find it on my map. In case you haven’t figured it out, I’m almost completely a visual learner.:slight_smile:

(I’m also left and right dyslexic - even making the L doesn’t help me, because I don’t know if it’s an L from my pov or from the pov facing me - I’m also very good at 3-D visualization :D. I’m also pretty good at doing one thing with my left and something else with my right - other left/right dyslexics, do you find you’re better than average at this too?)

The way map/sense of direction abilities are correlating in an inverse relationship with mathematical abilities here is almost scary. Someone should do a study.

52

Let’s see… things I Get.

I love maps and have no problem with using them. When I get verbal directions, I sometimes have to folow them as I’m listening and construct a little map inside my head (3D if necessary) to fully make sense of it.

Math… so-so. I was one of those annoying people who just couldn’t accept formulas on faith: I had to work out for myself some sort of internal representation of what was going on before I could comfortably use the formulas. I wasn’t afraid of numbers thouigh; once I had an internal representation that worked, I had no problem. (I never went into quantum physics, obviously.)

I realised a while ago that at some basic level I seem to think in 3D. I dream in 3D, with colour, sound, touch, and even smell. (Given the content of my dreams, that last can be rather… disturbing.) At various times, I’ve also dreamt in French, in perfectly-drawn and stylised animations, and in the Labview programming language.

[sub]At one point, after a great effort, I managed to think in 4D. I was trying to animate a hypercube in my head… [/sub]

Once I got into a discussion with some multilingual friends, and we were asking each other, what language do you think in? And do you think in more than one? I realised that often I basically describe the pictures in my head, in whichever language I have that suits the occaision.

I Get area codes, cellphones and telephone-numbering. However, even though I can male a little animated 3D model on the rotating Earth to help me, I always have to stop and think about time-zone differences, and I never feel certain about them.

Things I truly Don’t Get?

I’m with FairyChatMom: I just Don’t Get the subtleties of interpersonal communication.

If you want me to pick up on something, you have to be really obvious about it, like hitting me over the head with a 2x4. This may help to explain why I rarely get dates: I never see whether (or even if) someone’s giving off signals…

53

Dont get: I dont think anyone has said plain-old reading yet. I wont remember much of what I read, unless (1) its a subject I’m interested in and/or (2) I read at a pace one of my professors described as “glacial” (not that I read each word slowly, just that I have to reread sections continuously). That’s not so bad and I can usually work through it.
Insight is worse for me. I have zero ability to see anything in a work of literature. Through high school we read over 40 novels and a countless number of short stories/poems so I’ve seen a good cross section and still nothing. Many people are puzzled about this and assume that I must have some ability no matter how remote. To them I give this example: In my last trimester senior year we were reading “This Side of Paradise.” When we came to the passage where Amory had his encounter with the devil the class went something like this:

Me: I didn’t understand what was going on in that part.
Teacher: What didnt you get? I thought it was really clear.
Me: That guy with the wierd shoes, what did he have to do with anything? Why did Amory freak out when he saw him?
Teacher: You mean the devil
Me: ???
Teacher: How in Gods name did you miss that Tim, the title of the damn section is THE DEVIL.
Me: Hmm, interesting.

I also dont get spelling, but thats probably because i was never taught how to sound things out, i was in some sort of a project spell it how you think it should be spelled" program throughout grade school.

I do get math, science, mechanics/carpentry, and I can read music.

54

I am horrible at math. I had to take algebra twice to pass it. Basic addition/subtraction/multiplication/division is easy, adding unknowns throws me off.

I can read a map and music easily though. ::shrugs::

55

My click for math happened early; I can’t really remember a time when I didn’t “get” math. I did some basic algebra on an aptitude test in first grade, simply because no one told me not to work the problems on the back of the sheet. I had never seen it before, but the whole idea of variables seemed intuitively obvious. <ducks as the math-phobes start flinging things>

I also get maps. I don’t understand the inverse relationship we’ve been seeing in this thread between map-readers and mathies. It all seems the same to me–mapping real-world things to symbols so that they’re easier to see and manipulate (ditto for musical notation). It’s a good thing I get maps, though–one of the things I don’t get is vehicular navigation. If I’m on foot, I stay oriented and find my way around with the greatest of ease; it doesn’t matter if I’m in the woods, a city, a building, or even underground. In a vehicle, OTOH, I just can’t seem to keep my bearings.

I also experience mini-clicks when programming or doing circuit design. I get the subjects in general already, but I experience little epiphanies related to particular topics. For example, I might tinker with a small circuit for a while, get it working, and then suddenly realize that I can remove 90% of the components and still make it work. I refer to these as “please-kick-me’s”. :slight_smile:

As for something I don’t get at all–cars. Don’t get me wrong, I understand what all the pieces do. I know how the ICE works, and what the alternator does, and so forth. Nevertheless, when I try to think about the machine as a whole, it’s like running headfirst into a brick wall. I have no idea why. <shrugs>

56

Maps I get. My sense of direction usually tends to be great, as I’ll either 1) orient myself based on the sun, or 2) just envision where I am versus where my destination is, and generally point myself in that direction.

Two things I don’t get:

  1. Certain karate moves. It doesn’t help that I only take karate classes in the summer, when I’m home from school. But there’s certain techniques and forms of kicks that have yet to “take” in my mind. Forms drive me batty, because the rest of the class is operating as though they’re second nature, while I’m trying to figure out which foot goes in front. (I was astonished that I actually passed my blue form test last summer. Now that I’ve got it, though, I’ve got it.)

  2. The game of Euchre. Some friends have tried to teach me twice now, and it still doesn’t make any sense. (Actually, I don’t comprehend most card games. Fish, anyone?) I think part of the problem here IS the instruction: both times, my friends jumped right into the language of the game without explaining it. “Well, this is a bower, and you need to use it to trump…” What the hell are you talking about? What the f*** is a bower? ARGH!

57

Things that dont click:

Maps.

The difference between right and left. Even making L’s with my fingers doesnt help, I cant tell which way an L is supposed to go unless im looking at one.

And I have no sense of direction. I got lost in a gas station once. the insides of which were alot like a big paper bag.

Things that do click:

Spelling. I dont know why, i just get it. if ive heard the word, or seen it somewhere spelled correctly, I will know if its spelled right any time i see it. Unless I am really tired.

Piano. I played when i was little, quit and didnt play for about 5 years, came back and suddenly I could play. Or at least pick it up really fast. It was fun. My fingers like doing piano, but not typing. Oh well.

umm…sense of pitch. I do not understand people that cannot find the right note.

Math, for me, doesnt really fit into either of these categories. It doesnt “click,” but it does make sense, for the most part. Its more challenging than alot of other subjects, but not really hard. It makes it more fun.

So I have no navigational skills, but can do fairly well with music.

58

The one biggest and most exciting click in my life was figuring out how to catch a fly ball. I was probably 9 or 10, and when anyone hit one out there anywhere near me, that sucker was caught. Great feeling. Somehow, I just learned to look at the darn thing way up there in the sky, and I could judge where it was going, and I was there to catch it. Great feeling.
And I never knew the butterfly clicked. I always thought it was just real hard to do. I’ll have to keep working on it.
Oh, and then the click involved with the relationship between chords and fingering on a guitar was pretty good; but nothing will beat that feeling of knowing that that guy is gonna be OUT when that ball lands in my glove.

59

I am geographically challenged. I can get anywhere in my hometown just fine, and I can read a map fine too. If I am navigating, that is. If I am driving and (obviously) cannot read the map whilst DOING so…all bets are off.

Just don’t tell me how to get anywhere I am not familiar with by telling me to turn West or East. I don’t get it. Why can’t you say turn left or right? I GET that! North or South? How the Sam Hill do you expect me to know what way is North or South? If I am not familiar with the area, how am I supposed to know what direction is West or East? I could guess, based on logical assumptions…but whenever I do I am wrong, so obviously I am logic impaired as well, at least when it comes to geography.

I LOVE it when someone gives me directions that make sense. Take the Lake Forest Park exit and turn right. After you see the Coco’s Restaurant take the next left. Turn right at the Wal-Mart/Costco intersection. Where you want to end up is just past the Arby’s on the right.

Even MapQuest has gotten into the conspiricy. I drove to Lynnwood (WA) today for my sister’s birthday dinner. MapQuest uses E-W/N-S instead of left and right as well. I, as might have been accurately anticipated, got lost. :slight_smile:

60

A fascinating thread! I believe everyone has certain subjects or aptitudes which come to them easily, and others which defeat even strenuous efforts to learn. I call them personal shiny spots and blind spots. When I meet people for the first time I find it fascinating to discover which ones they have.

And so to maps. I’m male, numerate, maths no problem. I’m (more or less) never late, I can always find where I’m meant to be. However, I do dislike maps intensely, and I do wonder if there’s such a thing as map dyslexia.

I think that my mind is strongly geared to semantic and literal data, and ‘wordy’ tasks. When I see a map, with the writing going in every which way direction, and in a variety of different fonts and colours, my mind kicks back and wants the data presented differently. This isn’t a serious beef with cartographers - I understand they do a great job. It just doesn’t gel with me personally.

Other personal blind spots? Music theory comes high on my list. There was a whole thread about this a while ago. I can play several instruments, and I can create music. However, I’ve had music theory explained to me very well, several times, by good and patient teachers, and none of it makes sense to me or ever sticks.

I also have virtually no mental visual field. In my mind, I can absorb and retrieve semantic/literal data easily. Likewise sounds, tunes, conversations and aural data. But I have virtually no idea what people and places look like 5 minutes after I’ve left. This is why I take so many photographs - it’s my substitute for poor (almost negligible) visual memory.

Shiny spots would include spelling. Like a lot of lucky people, even though English spelling is completely mad, I seemed to ‘get it’ without trying when I was little (this statement more or less guarantees this post will include spelling flubs, despite any amount of preview care). Oh, and I can write poetry, verse and song lyrics at the drop of a hat. Fusing meaning, rhythm, metre and rhyme scheme is something I’ve always been able to do.