15 ms·
That's not what it's like for me. I simply can't tell the difference between symbols that have been rotated or reversed. So I made it through an engineering d
by jasonkester 9y ago
That's not what it's like for me.
I simply can't tell the difference between symbols that have been rotated or reversed. So I made it through an engineering degree with "the alligator eats the bigger number" mnemonics for > and <.
The first thing I do when I get a new dev machine is take a pen and write "\r\n" up above the delete key. I've never gotten the slashes in the right direction on that key sequence from memory even though I type them several times a day (I just had to edit my post after looking it up right now and realizing I'd typed it wrong on my new laptop).
Anything that can be reversed, I reverse roughly 50% of the time. Because to my brain, they're interchangeable.
- yoz-y 9y agoIt sounds like it would be helpful if the symbols we use for writing were unambiguous even if rotated or reversed? Do you use some special fonts that help with symbols such as > and <, b and d and so on?
- jasonkester 9y agoNah, it's not really a big deal. I've never considered it as holding me back or anything. Apart from having to fix the occasional unescaped character in a string, it doesn't have any meaningful effect on my life.
- SeanLuke 9y agoThis is interesting. Is it both rotated or reversed? Because your < > example, and your \ / example, can be defined as either one. So for example: - Do you have problems disambiguating P and d? - Do you have problems disambiguating d and b?
- jasonkester 9y agoProbably just reversed. I always got my J's backwards as a kid, but never upside down. If I have an external visual queue I can use, I'm good to go. That's what made the >< thing work. I got the intersection/union symbols down because union happens to both look like and start with a U.
- memsom 9y agoFor me it was number 7. I fought with it for a number of years. I went on summer break one year around 8 or 9, came back and all my 7's were backwards again. Thing is I couldn't see it till the teacher pointed it out.
- zmk_ 9y agoUnrelated, but I found that (uni) students find it easier to remember what conCAVE and conVex mean by recalling the shape of an entrance to a 'cave' and the shape of letter 'v'. Visual cues are very useful, even if you do not suffer from dyslexia.
- k__ 9y agodoes it mix dynamically whole reading, like in the example or is it static like this: "Peoqle like hot bogs."
- jasonkester 9y agoLetters never appear reversed. For me, it's only output that's affected, and touch typing fixes that for text.
- robmcm 9y agoIt's more in the translation step between your vision and your mental image. If you ever stare at a single word it's never muddled or back to front, but when you scan a sentence and think back over what you have seen words may be in different orders, perhaps based on a typical grouping for those words. For example if you scanned over your comment, it could come out as, "it does mix dynamical while reading". "It does" and your typo being corrected. Try staring at a group of 5-6 words quickly, close your eyes, visualize them and read them back. For me it's like there is a limited buffer, so when I parse a sentence and then read it back in context the start may have become corrupted.
- tehwebguy 9y agoAny apparent effect on your Tetris skill level?
- pharrington 9y agoInteresting question, although there are standards to Tetrimino block coloring.
- theodore_q2 9y agothat is totally what it like for me. However I have not been able to put my finger on it until you just spelt it out just now. other characters such as £$& are a pain to do whilst writing.
- cwbrandsma 9y agoHow about not remember right-from-left hand? Not remembering if the hot water is on the right vs left? Switching syllables in longer words? <- all of these are me.
- sporkologist 9y agoRichard Feynman had to consult a mole on his left hand to remember the difference between left and right.
- thenipper 9y agoOnce I got tattoos on my forearms it made figure out left and right so much easier.
- steinuil 9y agoWhen I was a kid I once wrote L and R on my forearms with a marker both for remembering which was which and to learn their name in english. I think it worked, because I always think of the corresponding forearm when I have to tell left from right.
- nannal 9y agoI have to refer to the hand I hold a mouse in, before that I used to imagine holding an n64 controller.
- zamalek 9y agoHold out your left hand and write "left" in the air using it as the L. After a few years of doing this (maybe two), this fixed the problem for me 99.99% of the time.
- milankragujevic 9y agoI actually have a rather big mark on my left hand and my grandmother taught me to differentiate left and right with that mark on my hand, which I still use as I sometimes get confused. Weird but true.
- tfinniga 9y agoDo any of the dyslexia fonts help?
- cwbrandsma 9y agowe should note, there are multiple types of dyslexia, each are very different. I am pretty darn dyslexic, and the dyslexic fonts don't help me at all, in fact they make it harder to read. But my issue wasn't really with reading, I have more problems writing.
- arethuza 9y agoI pretty sure that if someone stopped me away from a computer and asked me to draw a slash and a backslash I'd probably get it wrong.
- ColinDabritz 9y agoThe cue I learned for that was "the stick man is standing on the line | and leaning forward / or backward \ " (Which is of course western reading direction sensitive)
- tripzilch 9y agoI always remembered it as, apparently they are both handwritten as an upwards stroke. Assuming western LTR reading direction, it means the slash forward goes forward, and the backslash goes backwards with respect to the reading direction. I mean, I never really thought about it, but that's how I "know" which is slash forward and which is backslash.
- NoodleIncident 9y agoI think that's mostly due to inconsistent terminology, with maybe a sprinkling of windows file paths. I think if most people used sed for a week they'd figure out which one goes between sections and which one escapes characters pretty quickly, even if they didn't know which one was the "back"slash.
- gcb0 9y agothe reason for the name of the slashs is: if they'd fall, do they fall forward or backward? / forward slash \ backward slash
- sigsergv 9y agoFor me, “forward” and “backward” are not applicable to the text, because they are in the different plane. Forward-backward vector lies on the line of sight, that's orthogonal to monitor or paper/book.
- 9y ago
- steinuil 9y agoI've been diagnosed with dyacalculia and I always have to use a similar trick to the alligator mnemonics to figure out which is "greater than" and "less than". But I think it has more to do with telling left from right, which I also have problems with.
- bcbrown 9y ago> Anything that can be reversed, I reverse roughly 50% of the time For me, it's any arbitrary, binary, convention. Left and right. Clockwise and counterclockwise. \ and /. Whether time zone offsets are added or subtracted from the UTC time. Interestingly, < and > never gave me a problem, perhaps because I've internalized the alligator mnemonic you mentioned.
- aswerty 9y agoPulling and pushing doors is what always gets me. I had a friend I did an interhship with for half a year and he'd always get a kick out of my inability to use doors in work correctly even when it said pull/push on it. Mixing up my p's and q's, and my b's and d's were a big problem when I was young but I luckily grew out of that since they were considering putting me into remedial education because of it. I also find I've developed a lot of my own pneumonics. So for > and < I know that the converging side is narrow and therefore it is the lesser side, the divering side is broad and as such is the greater side. Or as someone from the west coast of an island - I figure out east and west by imaging my country knowing that I'm on the west coast. Funnily enough north/south or up/down don't cause me trouble. It's only things that have vertical symmetry or that can rotate that confuse me.
- klez 9y agoSo, I am dyslexic too? That's new. I mean, I thought it was just like the article, but if it's also confounding directions (sometimes I have to think about left and right, I sometimes think that California is on the east coast, I make a mess with clockwise/counterclockwise) then I have that problem too.
- pfd1986 9y agoIt's horrible if you're coming from languages such as Portuguese in which "puche" literally means pull!! Almost 10 years in the states and I still have to think before every single git commit.
- gcb0 9y agonote that "puche" in Portuguese is pronounced exactly like "push" in English.
- mc32 9y agoI thought it was more like "pushy" with the y more of a schwa sound.
- henriquemaia 9y ago
- whathemerow 9y agowoot! I never knew this one. I always see them as little slides, but then forget what means what.
- hanoz 9y ago> I made it through an engineering degree with "the alligator eats the bigger number" mnemonics for > and <. I don't understand this at all. The bigger number is at the bigger end, that's the whole point of the symbols. What does the alligator introduce, apart from an extra step and doubt over whether it's larger or smaller numbers they are said to eat?
- FungalRaincloud 9y agoIt's memorable.
- hackinthebochs 9y ago>The bigger number is at the bigger end, that's the whole point of the symbols. It probably has to do with how it was taught. I was never taught "the bigger number is at the bigger end", it was simply "> means greater than and < means less than" and we were supposed to memorize that. The alligator mneumonic is just a way of recovering the original meaning.
- mementomori 9y agoSecond that. Half the time I get directions wrong, whether it's adding/subtracting, multiplying/dividing, up/down, etc. Math was a mess and finance was an absolute nightmare, especially with derivatives.
- cardiffspaceman 9y agoI actually think as a layman, that people just confuse opposites period. I've actually heard Japanese people say in Japanese, "other left" (context: contest with blindfolded driver getting directions from seeing passenger). So my evidence is that plus other similar occurrences, across cultures. I think some dyslexics may be trying to explain their experiences using something that isn't particularly diagnostic (though they have a real issue, opposites isn't the real issue) Like a heart patient who says "I hate climbing stairs" We all hate climbing stairs.
- milankragujevic 9y agoWow, seems like I have dislexia too, some mild form probably, as I often mix up the < and > and arrows etc... Weird I haven't been diagnosed, I remember having much trouble in earlier grades of school having to differentiate b d p q...