Used to amuse myself during long lectures in college by visualizing complex shapes and rotating/adding details to them. Can still do the same with most previously seen objects, color and texture included.
Am in the arts, and know quite a few people within the arts who can do similar things.
Another thing about schematics… they’re good at giving a high-level overview of a circuit. You can ‘chunk’ various parts as well, for explanatory purposes.
When pSpice or whatever analyzes a circuit, I believe it creates a formula for every component in the circuit and calculates them based on what’s connected to each point between components on the circuit, and what kind of conditions you are imposing (DC, AC, frequency, voltage, etc).
There are different levels of detail you can go to as well. In school, we typically assumed the wires joining components were ‘perfect’, for example; no resistance, no capacitance to ground, no inductance. This would give a first-order result, which might be all that is needed.
But if we were doing, say, antenna analysis on circuit-board traces, we’d have to consider those things, plus the physical shape of the components, and their nearness to ground planes and other components, etc. It’s much closer to the actual physical reality, and much more detailed. But it would give indications of whether there would be signal garble or interference that a basic analysis would miss.
Point taken. At the beginning level I’m at, sure – calculating total resistance is just a simple algorithm. I can see where schematics are a nice, tidy heuristic for something more complicated.
Answer to OP: I, a proud American, suck the visual’s up the ass!
More seriously, I suppose early use of this heuristic in a student’s career is designed, pedagogically, to “whip up the stragglers” (in Chuang-Tzu’s phrase, IIRC) and not exclude anyone with formal training in logic. May explain why some of my classmates complain about digital systems, where I think this is fucking gravy and back in my own wheelhouse.
I guess I have massive fail as a thinker – I want everything to be reduced to an algorithm, in principle. Maybe I am Fregean to the core.
Yeah, digital was easy. Analogue could range between ‘hairy’ and ‘black magic’ (ref: the Smith chart).
Actually, I was wrong – c’mon. Some crazy ass diamond-crystal-triangle circuit with so many multiple paths – just give it in straght language, not some stupid diagram. It’d take a guy like me three months toi write it out and decode it – and an engineer a half-second to see what the deal is. They didn’t call Wittgenstein a smart fellow for nothing – he got that shit down. As did Broch (German pig) and Musil.
That’s it – I’ve outed myself as a stoop. I cannot see a half-complicated schematic all that easy. I’m not even that stupid, but if I can’t do it, that says something maybe about those who can – major props.
I’ve had to tell my pastor not to take my doodling during his sermons personally. His response was that the auditory learners sit up front, the kinesthetic learners in the back so they can fidget or get up and move around, and the visual learners get the rest of the sanctuary.
What I lack in attention span I make up for in visualization. I can picture anything – here, I’ll cue the Jurassic Park T-Rex and have it clomp up the street and take a bite out of the front of our house. Ooh, that was awesome. And he was purple, and gave a Barney laugh as he chewed the front door.
Your house was the brick one set back among the trees on the west side of the street, yes? 'Cause I’ve had that same daydream, only we lived in the beige two-storey place on the east side.
So it was YOU sending that critter over here! I was getting confused by the number of times it happened while I was busy watching television or posti–whoa! There goes the front porch again! Knock it off, dude!
Hey, I don’t live there any more. The new owners took off the aluminum siding that my dad had installed and painted the place grey. So it’s someone else sending Chaos Barney. 
(incidentally, notice the broken tooth on his left side–uh, I’ve said too much.)
I don’t think they’re quite the same. I’m really good at visualizing objects. I can think of all them, pretty accurately, in 3d, and rotate the image in my mind with no problem. I’m an engineer too, and am quite fine with visualizing schematics and whatnot.
On the other hand, I have absolutely no navigational skill or intuition. I’ve taken a few of those “Do you have a female or male mind” tests and always get pegged as a female mind (I’m a man) largely because, I suspect, I can’t navigate for shit. I’ve read about the alleged differences between “female thinking” and “male thinking” navigation, and supposedly (and this ain’t fact, just what I’ve read)
“male” (supposedly) navigation involves having a map in your head, and having a good sense which way is north (or whatever). Supposedly “male” navigation is good at knowing where you are, knowing which direction you are currently facing and then being able to map your way (mentally) to your destination.
“female” navigation is supposed to be all about landmarks. From a given start point, you know how to get to point X by following recognizable landmarks. As in, (getting around my home city), “I take this road to the gas station, then turn left, follow it to the High School, turn right, etc., until I’m there”
I don’t know if these definitions of male/female navigation are correct, but I do notice:
Most of my coworkers/friends are male, and they do seem to follow the “male” pattern. I’ve seen repeatedly male colleagues and friends, while with them in a strange city, unerringly able to orient to compass directions, and then be able to plan a rough direction plan to the destination.
Like I said, I’m a man, but I completely use the supposedly “female” navigation system. I learn and remember landmarks, and use these to plot a destination (pharmacy, turn left, Chipotle, turn right, Starbucks, turn left, etc.)
And also I am completely lost in any city I haven’t acquainted myself with. Thank god for GPS, I would be gone without it.
Strong visualization may be a prerequisite for art, but I can assure you that it’s not enough. My visualization ability is excellent (though my visual memory does not seem to be exceptional), but my artistic endeavors range from “serviceable, more or less” to “unmitigated disaster”.
I can construct a complex image–like a room full of assorted objects–in my mind, sustain it, view it from different angles, hear associated sounds, and even imbue elements of it with (faint) scents, flavors, and textures. Unfortunately, I fail horribly at trying to externalize any of that–I can’t draw or sculpt, and though I play a number of musical instruments, I stink at playing by ear, so I can’t reproduce the music I hear in my head.
I have a good visual memory. I mean, I can remember stupid visual details from years ago. If I’ve read a book, I can usually remember about where on the page something is. Color’s not a problem. My memories are usually very detailed, very visual. I’m also pretty good at remembering what I’ve heard. I’ve only ever taken notes for one class ever (AP physics in high school), and I did very well in school.
Maps and routes are easy enough. I’ll remember the texture of objects in addition to color.
That being said, I have to turn it on, or it just goes in one ear (or eye) and out the other. It’s like I’ve got a tape recorder memory, as long as I remember to put in the cassette. And don’t get distracted by something more interesting. Though visually, I think I’m about the same as everyone else?