I realized that the way I look at numbers is a form of synesthesia. Someone here on the SDMB suggested it a few years ago, but I just started looking into it.
I always thought synesthesia a fascinating concept and thought it’d be cool if I had it. So I was wary of the suggestion as being wishful thinking. But I happened to be reading up on it and found an illustration from Francis Galton, who discovered the phenomenon. It showed how various people visualized numbers in a consistent images. One of them was exactly the way I visualize numbers.
So when I think of numbers, I see a column of boxes that make a right angle turn to the right at 10, then another turn to the left at 20. It’s a column up to 100, where there’s a dark line, then a series of columns for 100, 200, 300, etc.
Dates are even more pronounced. The days of the week are a flattened donut, with half of it being the weekdays and the other half weekends.
Individual years are another donut. There’s a dark line at January 1, and another at September 1.
Centuries are columns, with the same right angle in the teens as numbers. The decades of the 20th century alternate between shaded and light, with lines to indicate major events. I’ve always been interested in history and this allows me to mentally place events along the line to remember when they happened in relation to each other.
Someone asked me if I saw it if I thought of numbers in French. I did, though the numbers between 80 and 100 were slightly shaded, probably because of the weird way the French name them.
These images come up automatically when I’m dealing with dates and numbers.
My numbers are 1-20 in a single vertical line…then by 10s in shorter lines. To infinity.
Dates are similar up to the year 2000.
The 2000s are still loosey goosey in my head til 2020 and now it’s a stable flat box.
Money is another thing. I volunteered at a concession stand for many years. Our registers were just for holding money because they didn’t work very well. So I learned to make accurate change in my head at a fast pace. I was rarely wrong.
Put a dollar sign on it and I can add or subtract it fast.
Numbers and me have always had a contentious relationship So the money thing surprised me.
I’m surprised this is considered synesthesia, to me it’s just “thought”. For me, most (all?) thoughts have an image component. Numbers, letters, days, weeks, months, years, grocery lists, abstract concepts, etc.
When I’m programming, it’s a bunch of abstract semi-formed 3d entities arranged and semi-interacting, etc.
Only in my day, people learned how to do that without subtraction.
Say the amount was $5.34 and you were given a $10.
You’d grab a penny and say, $5.35
A nickel and say $5.40
A dime – $5.50
Two quarters – $6.00
four dollars – 7-8-9-10
Calculators and computers have dumbed us down, I think. I had a boss with an MBA from Harvard who could barely multiply by single digits without a calculator.
I’m not sure 4 steps of adding and 4 of counting(technically I guess there is one multiplication in there as well) is all that much more impressive that one step of subtracting.
It’s easier because it’s one step – you’re handing out the change as you calculate. If you subtract, you know you have to give back $4.66, but then have to figure out what combination of coins makes 66 cents.
When counting up, you don’t even have to know it’s 66 cents.
Interesting. The only one of those that has an image component for me is “grocery lists”; and that image is just that the word “list” makes me think of what a list I make (on any subject) looks like.
When I was a child, the numbers – I think only up through 9 – had, how can I say this, individual characters? I don’t remember this clearly now, or so much which had which character, but I do remember I thought of a couple of them as being unpleasant and some others as being nicer to deal with. I’m pretty sure I liked 3 better than 6, for instance.
ETA: I’m fairly good at sorting out change in my head.
Synesthesia, as I understand it, isn’t just inner perceptions associated with certain ideas - it’s actual overlays on your sensory input: you see the number 3 on a printed page, and it actually looks red to you.
I started having synesthesia in kindergarten, when I insisted that A is red, B is orange, C is yellow-green, etc. This later went on to include numbers and musical notes and keys. In math classes, I always visualized every problem, and came up with correct answers before anyone else. Teachers were amazed.
Ya, that article seems to make sense. Like the months of the year in a circle and with different colors, I do that, same with the days of the week. I am a little surprised that other people do the months of the year thing the same way I do, I always assumed each person created their own representation. Makes me curious why the commonality, maybe our brains are making use of some underlying base capability.
For numbers, mine are typically organized vertically and in groups except for the area of focus:
…
200’s
100’s
20’s
10’s
…
3
2
1
0
They are in groups until I need to drill into the details. if I’m thinking of single and double digit numbers, then everything in the hundreds and thousands are in fuzzy blob groups, getting larger and more faint as the number increase, so 100 through 1000 is a blob with hints of 100’s groupings and everything above 1000 is just a big blob of a slightly different color.
if I’m thinking about the numbers around 175 then numbers right around that come into focus and I also see the 100 mark and the 200 mark and things like 300 and 400 beginning to fade and numbers below 100 are out of focus but in a special color/place because they come back often.
If I’m thinking about two million, then I see a two million and one million and maybe three million, everything else is faded except for a marks at 100,000 and 1,000.
Cool! I do this but never gave it much thought. Now that you’ve pointed it out, I realize the purpose of the numbers matters a lot. Straight up numbers from about -1 to 110 have a consistent visualization in my head. Temperatures (from about 108F to 0F) are also visualized, but not the same way, because temperature is its own thing, separate from abstract numbers.
Huh. I don’t see anything for calendar numbers, though. (Months and days of the week, sure. But not dates.)
I see days of the month horizontally left to right within a kind of box/border around it that is the month being focused on, with other months on left and right.
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