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komponisto comments on We're all forgetting how to read analog clocks. Or are we? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (32)
When reading an analog clock, what method do you use? Do you:
(1) multiply the (minute-hand) number by 5?
(2) search a memorized list of (minute-hand number, number of minutes) correspondences (i.e. remember that "8" corresponds to 40 minutes separately from remembering that 8*5 = 40)?
(3) use the minute-hand number as a measure of the geometric angle of the minute hand's current position, and remember a correspondence between visualized angles (that are multiples of 30 degrees) and numbers of minutes?
(4) something else?
My own method seems to be a combination of (2) and (3). (I think I originally learned by "counting" multiples of 5 up to whatever the current minute-hand position was. This is actually similar to the way I learned multiplication, but the two processes weren't stored in the same mental location.)
(4): I don't convert the minute-hand position into a number of minutes - I convert the angle into a duration. If I want to know how long it'll be until some other time I picture than angle swept out by the minute hand as it travels.
(4) Count to the minute hand in five-minute intervals from one of the geometrically-obvious reference points :00, :15, :30, or :45.
I also dislike analog clocks and never properly learned to read them.
(4): Ditto Khoth -- the keys in my lookup table are angles (mainly the obvious four). When I'm thinking about the minute hand or second hand, I don't think about the hour numbers printed on the clock face at all.