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gjm comments on Polling Thread - Personality Special - Less Wrong Discussion

6 Post author: Gunnar_Zarncke 05 November 2014 10:40PM

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Comment author: Adele_L 06 November 2014 06:42:45AM *  7 points [-]

It's well known that men are better at mental rotation and other forms of spatial reasoning than women. I've always been pretty good at it - my default technique is to carefully check the relations (i.e. count the number of cubes in the segment, note the relative angle of the joint, and make sure they match). It was only recently that I realized that some people actually just rotated it in their head, and 'looked' to see if it was the same.

Anyway, I was wondering if maybe the technique used was correlated with gender.

What sex were you assigned at birth?

With what gender do you primarily identify?

What method do you use to do mental rotations?

(Something else}

Submitting...

Comment author: gjm 06 November 2014 09:54:49PM 5 points [-]

Just adding to the "a bit of both" chorus. I visualize and then (if still in more doubt than I'm comfortable with) count cubes and check angles in the supposedly matching bits. In some cases I count/check some parts but not others.

(I think my visualization skills are pretty weak, but I may be comparing myself with other mathematicians rather than the general population, which might well produce skewed results.)