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The author describes thinking of 9 as floating around looking for a 1 to chomp off another number. This is very clearly designed to support good intuitions abou
by feoren 5y ago
The author describes thinking of 9 as floating around looking for a 1 to chomp off another number. This is very clearly designed to support good intuitions about adding in base 10, but it produces bad intuitions about binary numbers, multiplication, polynomials, etc. If faced with myriad other problems that involve 9, like, say: "which is bigger: 2^9 or 9^2?" or "how should we store words from an alphabet with 9 characters in memory?" or "how can we distribute 9 things equally?" or "for which n is 9^n + 2 prime?" or "how should we expect an atom to act if it has 9 electrons?", a completely different way of looking at the number 9 is warranted. In that last case, the exact opposite is true: 9 is desperately trying to rid itself of a 1, not find another 1 to grab.
- gouggoug 5y agoThe author isn't describing a random system they came up with to deal with numbers. They are describing how their brain naturally sees numbers: which is commonly referred to as synesthesia.
- chaxor 5y agoWhat's interesting about it is that it may show some evidence of synesthesia being education or culture dependent. Using base10 for numbers is taught at an early age, when the brain is forming a huge number of associations for learning, but I don't think it's been shown that synesthesia arises purely from "nature" (genetic) origins. So with the right thoughts, anyone may be able to push themselves into this state.
- loa_in_ 5y agoAuthor coming up with a system, and the system arising naturally are not mutually exclusive as far as we know. After all, what is natural vs... vs what, really?
- tarentel 5y agoI still think you're missing the point a bit. I don't think the author is doing this as some sort of trick or by design. I think they're literally describing how they visualize numbers in their head. Reading through other peoples' comments seems to support my conclusion on this. Maybe they visualize other number relations differently in their head. To me, I could not do math in my head like this and it makes very little sense to me. I don't even really get what they're describing to be honest with you. I visualize numbers in my head as the number symbol you'd write down.