As I’ve mentioned in other threads, I cannot guesstimate (wow, that’s actually a word, according to Firefox) measurements of any kind to save my life. I can’t tell a teaspoon from three teaspoons. I couldn’t tell you whether it’s five miles to the next McDonalds or five feet. My guesses as to what a cup of liquid looks like would be completely off. I always, ALWAYS underestimate the amount of leftover pasta I shovel onto my plate until after it’s heated in the microwave (which confuses even me!). I’m constantly amazed by folks like Alton Brown who pinch up some salt and are able to safely assume that it’s about a teaspoon. I’d probably end up putting a tablespoon in and not even realize it.
Anyone else with this affliction? How do you deal with it when it becomes important in day to day life? Any tips?
I am actually excellent at this. I can go into a grocery store and put a pound of cherries in a bag with startling accuracy. If it feels to me like seven minutes went by, chances are very good that seven minutes went by.
I just felt the need to come in and boast. I suppose the fact that I can’t find my way out of a paper sack is penance enough. I can point out the spot two hundred yards from where I’m standing, but I sure don’t know where the hell I’m standing.
I bet it took AB much time, dedication, and practice to be able to measure with skill and accuracy like that.
I’m sure if you dedicated your time to measurement you would find marked improvement. I think its just like anything, and that practice, hardwork, and practice will help out a whole lot.
I’m rotten with distances. I’m always shocked when I see the mapquest distances noted. A mile seems like a long distance to me, but I walk about 1/2 mile every morning to get to the vanpool pickup spot. I thought it was about 1/8 mile.
It’s all about practice. I use to work for a company that inventoried stock for other companies. After doing it enough you learn to estimate by default.
I’m like the OP. One problem is that I also misjudge how close an oncoming car is when making a left turn, for example. So I have learned to just wait and be more cautious. (Which ticks off drivers behind me. Oh well.)
For me, I think more in terms of abstract relations than proportions. How things are ordered and connected. Helps a lot in computer programming.
For small things, find body measurements that are close and remember them. My foot is about 1 foot, the last digit of my thumb is about 1 inch, my finger span about 6 inches, fingertip to fingertip about 1 yard, etc
There are other fun ones out there, too - I remember from school that a paperclip weighs about 1 gram; a chicken 1 kilogram.
At our department Xmas party yesterday, we had a game where one of our moisturizer packages was filled with M&Ms and we were supposed to guess the amount. The correct answer was 249. The answers ranged from 100 to 1501 (!). Interestingly, all of the extreme ranges were guessed by women. (I guess 215, if you must know.) So you’re not alone.
My advice to help improve is to simply start making yourself aware of common lengths so that you can use this to extrapolate unknowns. For instance, I know:
[ul]
[li]the length between my knuckle and fingertip of my thumb is 1 inch[/li][li]the tiles in my kitchen are 12 inch squares[/li][li]I’m 5’5" tall and the typical ceiling is 9 feet tall. [/li][li]a football field is 100 yards[/li][li]the distance from my home to the top of my street is 1/3 of a mile; to my work is 5.2 miles. [/li][li]my lot width is 100 feet and .85 acres. [/li][li]the distance across from NYC to LA is 2500 miles and the distance from LA to Honolulu is 2500 miles.[/li][/ul]
I can use these known measurements to estimate unknowns. If I want to know the length of a room, I try to figure out how many times I’d have to lay down from head to toe. 2 times = 10 feet; 3 times = 15 feet, etc. If I want to know how tall a tree is, I estimate whether it would hit the roof in my kitchen, etc.
I’m good with measurements used in cooking, but like others have said, that’s because I do it a lot, so it’s become familiar to me. But I suck at judging distance! 200 yards? 200 feet? <shrug> no freaking clue.
When my in-laws were here visiting from Denmark a couple of months ago, I suggested walking up to this little wilderness park that’s not far from our house. My father-in-law asked how far away it was, and I guessed about a kilometer. He has some trouble with his legs hurting, but a kilometer was doable for him, so he agreed and we took off.
He had to stop several times to sit down and rub his calves, but eventually we made it there, and had just missed it closing by 5 minutes! So we had to turn around and head back home. By the time we got back, my FIL joked that “everything is bigger in America, even the kilometers!”
Well it turns out that the park is actually 1.3 kilometers from our house, so I wasn’t that far off, but far enough to get teased relentlessly the rest of the week.
This surely is hyperbole - taken literally, it would mean you can’t tell the difference between something that is shorter than your car and something more than a thousand times as long. It would be worse than not being able to decide whether a squirrel is bigger or smaller than a horse.
I’ve no particular proble with measurements, but I’m unable to estimate distances.
My “distance references” still are the distance between home and school when I was a kid (about 150 yards) and the distance to the next village at this time (about a kilometer and a half). When I have to estimate a distance, I try to mentally compare it to these two references. And still get it grossly wrong.
Note that I’m not bad (and maybe rather good) at orienting myself or finding my way, say, in the wild, but the concept of distance is a complete mystery to me (and I’m also very bad at estimating how long it will take to go to that spot over there. Not good when you’re, for instance, in a mountainous area).
Well… 1km instead of 1.3 kilometer seems very good to me. When I say that I suck at estimating distances, I mean that I can get it wrong by a factor of maybe 3-4. So my “kilometers” are between 300 yards and 2 miles long (I generally under-estimate the distance when I don’t think too much about it, or in an urban context, but gross overestimating is also possible if I try too hard).
My man suffers from that disorder too. Whether it’s guessing times (how long it will take to get a task done) or sizes (what size Tupperware we need for the leftovers) or measurements (how long a string of lights we need to go around the window), he’s usually a little off. I’m not sure how he dealt with it before I came along, but for the moment he’s still convinced he’s ok at estimating… probably because I don’t get smug and told-you-so-ish when it becomes obvious that my estimate was much closer.
I think it probably does have a lot to do with practice and experience. But I suppose there are some people who are just bad at estimating.
Coming from someone fully capable of eyeballing most things within ridiculous closeness, there are secrets, that once learned give you an advantage.**
[ul]
[li]3 oz of meat – a “normal” serving – is approximately the size of your palm and 1/2" thick[/li][li]cup your hand tightly, it will form a little scrunchy cup in the palm, fill that cup to just under the place where the fingers meet the palm – it should be roughly a teaspoon[/li][li]a yard is the easy one – grab a piece of fabric/yarn/string between the thumb and forefinger, hold it to your nose, then reach your arm out to the side, keeping the end you plan to cut by your nose – if you’re short, turn your head away from the direction your arm is, if tall, face forward – cut where the fabric touches your nose. I am 5’3", my husband is 6’ it is within 3" of a yard with either of us[/li][li]the thumbnail is roughly 1/2"[/li][li]a slice of american cheese is roughly one ounce[/li][li]a dollar bill is roughly 6" long – or half a foot[/li][/ul]
Liquids are tough – we are confronted with fucked up portioning all the time, so you just have to practice to get liquids down. A few things to keep in mind – 3 tsp = 1 tbsp, 1 tbsp = 1 oz, 8 oz in a cup. There are other tricks that I use to be able to eyeball things, but it’s almost all based on remembering the measurements of other things for comparison, like a sheet of paper is 8.5"x11" and knowing what things are denser than others. It helps me to know that fudge is denser than cookies, so a lb of fudge will take up less space than a lb of cookies.
**obviously, we are all different sizes, and there will be some variation, but like I said, it is all within amazing closeness.
I just have to measure stuff. I cook a LOT, okay? And I mean COOK. Today I’m pulling dinner for 40 out of thin air, complete with sinus infection. And I have to measure everything because I just have a terrible eye for measurements.
My greatest hope is that when I run this 5K in two weeks my poor head for measurements will actually work for me and I’ll be surprised when I hit 3 miles. I don’t think that’s going to happen, though.
Linear and planar measurements are well within my ability to estimate. Volume confounds me. Drinking glasses that have a rim wider than the base are beyond me. “Fill it half full,” you say? I’m most likely to give you an amount that’s halfway up the glass, and depending on the slope of the glass could be significantly less than half the volume. By brute force you can learn relative volumes of common containers, but liquid comes in so many different shaped vessels. There’s exotic wine bottles, unique vinegar bottles, myriads of water bottles, thin glass, thick glass–ugh! I can’t do it.
Feet, inches, tsp, tbsp, cups: all okay. Miles: not so much. I seem to be very good with amounts: by that I mean that after handling a deck of cards, I can usually pick off a given number of cards more often than not. When I need to dump seven pills out of a bottle, that’s what I end up with in my hand. This sort of thing happens to me all the time. Also, I can eyeball level and plumb to within about 1/8".
