Re: How do women read maps?

Nick Maclaren <nmm1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <Z_2dnYDEHZcaZRTVnZ2dnUVZ8qPinZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Kate XXXXXX <kate@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
|>
|> > |> I was a little
|> > |> surprised to see that the linguists were more likely to be more linear
|> > |> than visual in their thinking, but my son is good at both languages and
|> > |> sciences & maths, and comparatively useless at English and Art.
|> >
|> > That is an artifact of the over-simplistic measurement. I am a clear
|> > example of why - it isn't worth posting the details, unless you are
|> > interested.
|>
|> I'm always interested in this sort of thing. I taught many different
|> types of kids over many years, and had to find ways of teaching classes
|> full of kids with not just different ability levels, but different
|> interests and different ways of thinking. ...

A slight diversion: I have been heretical to several children of
relevant age, when I pointed out that there is no need to learn
your tables, if you can work out the answer fast, correctly, within
a second or so. That is quite good enough and nobody will know the
difference - I did that until I was 16. I am an ex-mathematician,
of course - and my limited surveying indicates that mathematically
able children find my method EASIER than rote learning! I always
worked out 7x8 by 2x(4x8) or 7x7+7 - and occasionally, for interest,
8x8-8.

That's how I've always filled in the holes in my rote memorised
tables. These old days it's how I fill in the bits that seem to have
temporarily slipped my mind :-)

Back to the thread.

Firstly, this "linear" versus "visual" division is crap. Not merely
are those terms deceptive ("verbal" is perhaps better than "linear"),
there isn't a single dimension. I think more "visually" than
"linearly", but think primarily conceptually - often in concepts for
which there ARE no words or visual representations! That means that
I often come to a correct conclusion, but can't put it into words
(at all) until after much thinking. This mode is not rare among
mathematicians and scientists.

Secondly, there are many different basic abilities involved in being
good in a field, some of which are linked genetically, some linked
socially (e.g. there's no point in developing a skill if you can't
use it because of the lack of another), and some are not linked.

I suspect the important human survival group is the tribe. So
evolution has arranged sufficient genetic diversity so that any tribe
of reasonable size is likely to have at least one person who's a good
leader, one person who's a very good navigator, one who is an
excellent hunter, one who is an excellent military strategist, one who
is an excellent story teller (and story rememberer), one who is very
good at solving puzzles, etc..

My impression is that these sundry various and various talents are
often sex-linked in a way that means on average women will tend to be
better at some things and men others, but that the variation exceeds
the sex-linkage. For example, women are on average smaller and less
strong than men, but for most men it's not difficult to find a woman
who is bigger and stronger, just more difficult than finding a bigger
stronger man.

There's also the question of extremes. Sometimes these talents also
come with a penalty, a disadvantage. Since men in terms of ultimate
survival of the tribe men are more expendable than women, some of
these talents, especially those which carry a penalty, vary more
widely around the average in men than in women. Hence there are more
weird geniuses and dangerous lunatics among men.

In my case, I am very literate, even by non-English academic
standards

I have been rather disappointed to find that among university students
the standards of education in English language and literature are in
some cases better in foreign students. It's not hard, for example, to
find a German university student who speaks English with a German
accent, but has a fluent command of English grammar and vocabulary few
native British students can match. That's in part because some decades
ago someone decided it was no longer necessary to teach our children
English.

I can't write English so the average person can understand it.
I am regularly flamed on Usenet - not for what I have posted, but
for what the flamers have read. Some are just trolls or otherwise
malicious, but many are not. But, actually, that is THEIR disability!
Yes, I do mean that the majority of the population can't read their
own native language correctly.

The point here is that I get meaning from what the words say, not
what the gestalt of the text implies - indeed, I can only understand
the latter when consciously analysing the text for it. But it turns
out that most people are the converse, and a fair number are unable
to extract meaning from the precise words if their reading of the
gestalt implies something different. Yes, I mean unable to - even
when it is explained to them at length - they fall back on the
'explanation' that the words and syntax clearly say X but the text
says Y. That makes no sense to me.

You're right. Most people interpret sentences with such strong
expectations from context and presupposition that they don't even
notice when the words used contradict their expectations.

Again, this is not a rare phenomenon among mathematicians and
scientists - probably related to the conceptual thinking. The
inability to understand the gestalt is a disability, of course, but
precisely the converse of the most common one.

I think there's more to it than that. In those cultures famous for the
gift of the gab and story telling, such as Irish and Russian, people
tend to use longer and richer sentences incorporated in larger and
richer contexts of meaning, and are also very fond of wordplay. So
through exposure and practice they become more skilled at parsing more
complex linguistic structures, and at deferring the collapse into
meaning of amibiguity. Irony for example depends on that kind of
skill.

So however it is that female map reading differs on average from male,
it's bound be by rules more honoured in the breach than the
observance. Race also plays a part. Australian aboriginal girls as
well as boys, for example, are on average much better at map reading
and navigation than the boys of the master races who were better at
imperial domination and stole their country from them.

--
Chris Malcolm cam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DoD #205
IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK
[http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]

.

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