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It's probably one of those things people end up memorizing, when learning about lenses or 3d figures like polyhedrons. It's like latitude and longitude. You c
by runningdogx 16y ago
It's probably one of those things people end up memorizing, when learning about lenses or 3d figures like polyhedrons. It's like latitude and longitude. You can try to derive meaning from e.g. "lat = lateral", but then, do the lines go across or are they measuring distance across (which would make the lines vertical)? Either you memorize the correct answer, or you can easily get mixed up by over-analyzing the meaning.
concave -> (cave, cavity) -> hole
convex, you sort of just have to memorize. As best I can tell from introspection, I've associated the sound/visual of "vex" with "outward"
- marchdown 16y agoVex, as in vertex. Bulging outwards. I think the proper way to remember those (I've struggled with them too) is actually use them a lot. For example, some mathematicians study convex geometry, which is a meaningful subject on its own. *(lazy ninja edit)
- rdrimmie 16y agoI've been doing a lot of geo-related work lately and confounding latitude and longitude was a regular source of logic errors. Only useful for North America, but my mnemonic for lat/lng is "latitude has a positive attitude". It doesn't necessarily help when identifying which is which on a map, but when using them for calculating proximity or drawing polygons on a map it works every time.
- RiderOfGiraffes 16y agoThe lines of longitude are always long, whereas the parallels of latitude can be shorter, and are always "parallel" (in some sense).