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32 Comments
- lexington86, on 05/10/2009, -2/+24Very interesting. Does anybody else ever feel like your unconscious mind can calculate solutions much faster than your conscious mind can realize it?
- Cone, on 05/10/2009, -1/+18"Teachers could emphasize the link between numbers and space by making use of spatial relations between numbers," he suggested—although such approaches would first have to be validated and tested by educators.
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That's so innovative. Hmm...let's call it...a number line! - lennybird, on 05/10/2009, -0/+8You aren't calculating *****. You're simply using muscle memory and timing. Your mind doesn't use trig and physics with every bat swing beneath your conscious mind, it's just doing what normally works, learned from trial & error.
You can be a good guitar player by intuition and repeated trial error. You don't have to understand the scales, keys, timing, etc. Just repetition. - rhinopig, on 05/10/2009, -0/+6Fair enough. It is an algorithm of sorts. The way I'd do 375 minus 125 is to break it apart. 75-25 and 300 - 100. I guess it's really multiple round-number number lines. And no, I'm not actually visualizing 300 dots and 100 dots, but I am visualizing that 100 is 1/3 of 300.
And I think we all have something much more important to do than commenting on digg. - specialK16, on 05/10/2009, -0/+6I don't think you are actually number crunching. It's more like intuition.
- jumpenjack, on 05/10/2009, -1/+6very
- JshMRsn, on 05/10/2009, -0/+4This reminds me of the use of GPUs being used for floating point math instead of the CPU. It's actually not too far off. I'm sure animal facial recognition has been doing extremely complex math for millions of years, perhaps our math ability is built upon those roots. GPUs have always been high-powered multipliers, now the CPU is taking advantage of that :)
- SteeleyDan, on 05/10/2009, -1/+5Of course it can, whenever you catch a ball or swing at a pitch in baseball you're calculating angles, speed, and intersections astoundingly quicker than one could do consciously.
- MadHarvey, on 05/10/2009, -0/+4Yes, you are calculating. Trig and physics are man made constructs to model that which happens in nature.
Your brain doesn't use these constructs subconsciously, but that doesn't mean that the brain doesn't perform the functions modeled by them in its own way.
In order for muscle memory to be possible, the information needs to be stored in your brain from a previous experience. The brain must be able to quickly compare this information to the information coming into your senses. These comparisons are calculations, even if they aren't the same as what you think of when you think of arithmetic in math class.
Its commonly believed that autism can unlock our consciousness to use some of that lower level calculating ability and map them to higher level functions like counting. - rhinopig, on 05/10/2009, -1/+5Just the other day I was thinking about how when I do addition and subtraction in my head I'm not really using an algorithm, just a number line.
- Ragzouken, on 05/10/2009, -1/+4But are you using numbers or just intuition?
- nmoulana, on 05/10/2009, -0/+2Just tried it in front of a camera... I think it's true haha!
- LacY, on 05/10/2009, -0/+2I wonder if this explains why I always look up when trying to solve a simple math problem. Even consciously trying not to, I find it hard not to look up and/or to the side. I guess it could also be to minimize visual stimuli while trying to concentrate on the problem...
- smemily, on 05/10/2009, -0/+1This reminds me of a show I saw about how expert chess players are actually using the face-recognition portion of the brain to instantly recognize and respond to chess scenarios.
http://www.tvthrong.co.uk/my-brilliant-brain/my-br ...
The mind is an amazing thing. - lennybird, on 05/10/2009, -0/+1So you're saying with every twitch and every finger movement, your brain isn't just recording how many electrical impulses to send and to where at what time, but must actually calculate it mathematically with trig and physics, except in a different way - a way to come to those mathematical conclusions that we are unaware of? Or are you just saying that in the case of recalled muscle memory?
- iaty, on 05/10/2009, -0/+1I think you're on to something.... Perhaps we can collect a good portion of human eyes and make a computing cluster out of it, of the likes we have yet to dream of...
- bipolarruledout, on 05/10/2009, -0/+1What if you find simple math to trivial to do well? (insert political joke)
- nmoulana, on 05/10/2009, -0/+1Almost as interesting as the damn article haha! I've always wondered about the relationship between facial expressions and visual recognition myself.
- nmoulana, on 05/10/2009, -0/+1That's strange, pretty neat though. As for me I just got really ***** fast at doing basic addition/subtraction/any simple operation. That's just the best way I can describe it however.
- kirkis, on 05/10/2009, -1/+2you sir have failed the joke.
- hoskeebo, on 05/27/2009, -0/+1Are you kidding? As soon as school administrations get a hold of this they will find creative ways to make it absolutely meaningless, or harmful. This is the kind of stuff that's best left in the lab.
Elementary schools don't give their teachers enough time or resources to teach as it is. Don't burden them with another "skill" that some incompetent "consultant" will teach them at a "seminar" and then hold the "accountable" for putting in in their "curriculum" so they can "test" it with some "standards."
Don't kids and teachers have a big enough burden?
Sure, in theory, this will help. But in practice it will only help in the hands of the few people that understand it and are mature enough not to abuse it by learning a smattering and thinking they are competent to apply it. And those people are exactly the ones that schools will never let in their doors. - inactive, on 05/10/2009, -1/+1I saw a show on the discovery channel about a bunch of people with amazing mental abilities. One guy was a so-called human calculator, and he was solving 6 digit by 6 digit equations and above faster than the interviewer could type it out on his calculator. Anyway, the guy would close his eyes, and his eyes would dart around like crazy, seemingly as fast and wildly as he could move them. So, yeah, cool deal.
- dnc34, on 05/10/2009, -4/+4That's interesting. I've always seen a connection between numbers and space. I never once thought about that connection being more physical than it is conceptual.
- dbz253, on 05/10/2009, -2/+2really? so something like 375 minus 125 you have a number line in your head that stretches from zero to 375? i call *****. and if it's not *****, and you are actually able to visualize that, then you should be doing something much more important than commenting on digg.
- SmurfSlut, on 05/10/2009, -1/+1Maybe this is why most nerds wear glasses
- elizabethhowell, on 05/10/2009, -0/+0I know that when I try to remember things (like a list) linking it to something physical makes it easier to remember. So maybe the same principle is true of figuring out math problems.
- EricJT, on 05/10/2009, -0/+0I've always described maths as essentially a form of pattern recognition.
As a statistician, I can sometimes just look at a page of numbers and point to the one that's wrong without any conscious effort. - napalmed, on 06/01/2009, -0/+0i conquer
- porl, on 05/10/2009, -1/+0ditto.
- Wisgary, on 05/10/2009, -6/+1^^^^^^ The square root of the comments above is *****
- monsterette, on 05/09/2009, -8/+3...interesting article...
- Kruse, on 05/10/2009, -12/+4Boring comment.
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