Do You Experience Number Forms ?

[zoobyshoe]

This is not exactly what I'd always understood as "synesthesia." For me, numbers have absolutely no color nor sound.

"Synesthesia" has never been limited to color and sound. Cytowic became famous for describing a man whose sense of touch was triggered by the taste of food. This was so important to him that he cooked according to how the food "felt" to his fingers, and on his arms and face. Rhody posted a comprehensive list of known pairings in the synesthesia thread:

https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=2704648&postcount=102

Regardless, this association of concept with an automatic sensory reaction has only recently (sometime between 2002 and 2008) been promoted to being regarded as a form of synesthesia: Spatial Sequence Synesthesia, as I mentioned (At least that's what Cytowic asserts. I don't even know what that means: did all the synesthesia researchers have a conference call and take a vote? I dunno). I personally never heard of number forms until Rhody linked to a video of Cytowic lecturing at a book signing in which he talks about what's discussed in Wednesday is Indigo Blue a couple/three weeks ago. Anyway it makes perfect sense to me that you could have a number form, have heard of synesthesia, and still not connect them in your mind.

 

[rhody]

Chi, anirundh215,

Let me get this straight then, if you picked up a new language and committed to memory and then used the numbers, no matter what their form they would be in an ascending ordered space, in their proper position (in your mind's eye so to speak), correct ? (except for truly large numbers in the billions range and beyond as you mentioned previously (Chi))
Is the same true for you anirundh215 ? Are you multilingual in math as well ?

Second, Chi, can you easily switch from one language to another with numbers, if so, do the numbers spatially occur next to one another (shared in hierarchical space) or in their own separate space ? anirundh215, if this applies to you same question as well.

I invite you both to watch this http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/arthur_benjamin_does_mathemagic.html" of Arthur Benjamin, a mathemagician: fast forward to 10:40 where he attempts to square two 5 digit numbers. He uses words to help keep track of intermediate calculation values and then retrieves the number from the word association (at 14:15, 77862 becomes cookie efficient), he uses 3 or 4 word to number associations in order to arrive at the correct answer.

Listen carefully because he runs through this very quickly. After watching this short segment, if either of you does math with large numbers in your heads, do you use number -> word association, then back from word -> numbers to arrive at the correct answer ?, or a different method due to your synesthetic hierarchical spatial organization with numbers ? In other words if you do higher math problems in your heads, how do you do it ?

Rhody...

 

[Chi Meson]

Chi, anirundh215,

Let me get this straight then, if you picked up a new language and committed to memory and then used the numbers, no matter what their form they would be in an ascending ordered space, in their proper position (in your mind's eye so to speak), correct ?

yes, that's correct.

Second, Chi, can you easily switch from one language to another with numbers, if so, do the numbers spatially occur next to one another (shared in hierarchical space) or in their own separate space ? anirundh215, if this applies to you same question as well.

the same number, no matter whatever the language, or form (Roman numerals, tally marks, written out, or numerals), the same number is always in exactly the same location.

Listen carefully because he runs through this very quickly. After watching this short segment, if either of you does math with large numbers in your heads, do you use number -> word association, then back from word -> numbers to arrive at the correct answer ?, or a different method due to your synesthetic hierarchical spatial organization with numbers ? In other words if you do higher math problems in your heads, how do you do it ?

Rhody...

I can NOT do higher order math in my head. I teach physics, and even the basic algebra that I have been teaching for ten years, the easiest possible stuff, I still need to write it out to be sure. The number form is a liability for math skills.

 

[zoobyshoe]

FYI, everyone, Rhody just unearthed a fascinating new form of synesthesia:

https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=2714867&postcount=121

 

[Chi Meson]

Here's another thing I've just considered:

decimals and fraction have no place on the form. This could be why I have a more-difficult-than-it-should-be time with wrench sizes. I have to pause and think, for example to figure out which size socket is larger than 3/8 , for example. I have to translate everything into "16ths."

There is also NO PLACE for PI!

Another problem is that 1.75 meters is not in the same place as 175 cm. So the scale of the unit has no bearing at all on the position. This means I must absolutely ignore the damn thing when doing math, but it still clouds my numerical intuition.

 

[rhody]

Chi,

When you said:

I can NOT do higher order math in my head. I teach physics, and even the basic algebra that I have been teaching for ten years, the easiest possible stuff, I still need to write it out to be sure. The number form is a liability for math skills.

A fair question to ask then is, do the spatially separated hierarchical numbers help, hinder, provide distraction, or are merely a curiosity (pets, as zooby fondly refers to them) to your everyday activities.
Have you every used them for anything, and if so what for ? Bookkeeping, reminders, things like that... ?

Rhody...

 

[zoobyshoe]

Here's another thing I've just considered:

decimals and fraction have no place on the form. This could be why I have a more-difficult-than-it-should-be time with wrench sizes. I have to pause and think, for example to figure out which size socket is larger than 3/8 , for example. I have to translate everything into "16ths."

There is also NO PLACE for PI!

Another problem is that 1.75 meters is not in the same place as 175 cm. So the scale of the unit has no bearing at all on the position. This means I must absolutely ignore the damn thing when doing math, but it still clouds my numerical intuition.

Number forms do not indicate high mathematical ability or deficiency, nor do they seems to be correlated with any specific intellectual talent or mental dullness. However, the automatic positioning of integers can interfere with more complex mathematics, such as algebra or calculus, as in the wayward numbers of the student cited above. "For one thing," notes Marti, "they are not evenly or consistently spaced. There is also some fluid or jelly-like movement to them." Magnitude can also be problematic because, for Marti, 6 is physically the highest number in her visual representation. Therefore, 6 and numbers containing 6 have the highest degree of magnitude. In other words it does not "make sense" to her that 11 is "larger than" 6 or that 234 is "greater than" 66. To her, magnitude comparisons are literally physical: when she thinks of someone older than herself she looks "up," whereas younger people are seen not "down" but "in back" of herself.

"...Indigo Blue" p.28

I can empathize with this number former. I had a great math crisis right off the bat in first grade when the teacher was teaching us to write and understand numerals. She called on me and asked which was "greater", 2 or 3. I hesitated. She said, "I mean which is larger." That didn't help at all. Reverting to some size estimating skill I didn't know I had, I pondered and determined that the numeral 3 was probably larger in size than the numeral 2, and gave that as my answer. "Right", said the teacher. I remained completely confused about the relevance of the physical size of the numeral to anything and really couldn't understand why she asked about it.

 

[Chi Meson]

Chi,

When you said:

A fair question to ask then is, do the spatially separated hierarchical numbers help, hinder, provide distraction, or are merely a curiosity (pets, as zooby fondly refers to them) to your everyday activities.
Have you every used them for anything, and if so what for ? Bookkeeping, reminders, things like that... ?

Rhody...

I think I went over all that earlier in the thread. In short, it is useful for simple addition and subtraction. I stated earlier that I can fold the form like an old carpenters ruler when playing considering multiples of fives, but after consideration, I think that is a spatial invention that I built way back long ago. Using the "fives" number form feels different than the "natural" one.

The greatest use is in remembering simple quantities, some dates, and I am punctual to a fault.

 

[zoobyshoe]

(pets, as zooby fondly refers to them)

That wasn't me, that was Jim McNamara and his "whatever-they-are eelights":

https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=2703729&postcount=58

 

[fuzzyfelt]

I'd say that's right. This is not exactly what I'd always understood as "synesthesia." For me, numbers have absolutely no color nor sound.

Everything seems to be spatial to me. Music also conjures spatial forms. I remember in a 6th grade art class, we all had to "paint what the music sounds like." While I suspect I was the first person to understand what the teacher meant, I had the hardest time of anyone. While others were making these static, abstract paintings, I was trying to figure out how to paint something that wouldn't stop moving and swirling.

And in retrospect, it seems that the lack of color made things difficult for me, too. I don't do color so well.

But the visual aspect of music always seemed to be a fairly common sensation, is it not?

I have the same problem with the name, and think “atypical intra-modal and cross-modal binding” is better, and I’m interested in how atypical it is. I hope not to detract anything from the verifiable, incredible experiences like those described in this thread, nor from a difference between such actual percepts in some and a bound ‘feeling’ in others, and then perhaps further differences in others generally, but to your question at the end- combining aspects of the arts is common, including combining vision and music. (However, not necessarily always involving the modal binding like that being discussed here, and also not as common as, say, seemingly normal cross-modal facial recognition, I guess.)

Painting music is a usual exercise, and, interestingly cross-modal painting often involves a line a bit like yours. I remember the first time we were asked to do this, we were asked to paint “pain”. We weren’t told, but it was expected we render pain as something intrusive upon an otherwise untroubled line, the line representing temporal progression in space. Fortunately, I ( I was the only one, too!) did think to use such a line, but unfortunately, my line spiralled inward, for various reasons I had, which lessened the impact and so wasn’t deemed successful enough.

If it is interesting, I think rather differently, and do do colour. As mentioned before, I don’t do measure and I think there are a lot more practical things to do than colour! I understand you find your spatial experience hasn’t been so helpful, but that it helps with memory, and I imagine it helps possibly with a feeling of conversancy? I can’t imagine what impact not doing colour would have, but guess it is like a pronounced absence of the things I just mentioned when regarding colour?

I’d like to ask more about the musical-spatial form, and for that matter, croesoswallt’s colour-musical tone diagram, but don’t wish to stretch the OP too far.

Maybe a quick question for croesowallt- does it mean that you have perfect pitch?

 

[rhody]

That wasn't me, that was Jim McNamara and his "whatever-they-are eelights":

https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=2703729&postcount=58

I beg to differ, from your post #68 in this thread:

I hope you don't mind my saying this is hilarious. They really are like pets, or a herd of bunnies, or a flock of pigeons.

Rhody...

 

[zoobyshoe]

I beg to differ, from your post #68 in this thread:


Rhody...

I am expressing understanding of Jim having referred to them as pets.

 

[rhody]

I am expressing understanding of Jim having referred to them as pets.

zooby,

Got it, now I am on the same page. I was thinking literal and you were interpreting. I was missing that part.

Rhody...

 

[zoobyshoe]

I was thinking literal and you were interpreting.

I wasn't interpreting. Jim literally said he though of them as pets:

As you can tell I think of them more like cute but annoying pets than anything else.

All I did was express understanding of that.

 

[rhody]

I wasn't interpreting. Jim literally said he though of them as pets:

All I did was express understanding of that.

No big deal, I find it amusing that he thinks that way, at least Jim accepts his number forms and has come to terms with them.

I reread his two posts as well. It must have been frustrating for him to have to keep it to himself all this time.

Rhody...

 

[EnumaElish]

Newly published: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0262514079/?tag=pfamazon01-20 (or newly republished?)

Product Description
What does it mean to hear music in colors, to taste voices, to see each letter of the alphabet as a different color? These uncommon sensory experiences are examples of synesthesia, when two or more senses cooperate in perception. Once dismissed as imagination or delusion, metaphor or drug-induced hallucination, the experience of synesthesia has now been documented by scans of synesthetes' brains that show "crosstalk" between areas of the brain that do not normally communicate. In The Hidden Sense, Cretien van Campen explores synesthesia from both artistic and scientific perspectives, looking at accounts of individual experiences, examples of synesthesia in visual art, music, and literature, and recent neurological research.

Van Campen reports that some studies define synesthesia as a brain impairment, a short circuit between two different areas. But synesthetes cannot imagine perceiving in any other way; many claim that synesthesia helps them in daily life. Van Campen investigates just what the function of synesthesia might be and what it might tell us about our own sensory perceptions. He examines the experiences of individual synesthetes—from Patrick, who sees music as images and finds the most beautiful ones spring from the music of Prince, to the schoolgirl Sylvia, who is surprised to learn that not everyone sees the alphabet in colors as she does. And he finds suggestions of synesthesia in the work of Scriabin, Van Gogh, Kandinsky, Nabokov, Poe, and Baudelaire.

What is synesthesia? It is not, van Campen concludes, an audiovisual performance, a literary technique, an artistic trend, or a metaphor. It is, perhaps, our hidden sense—a way to think visually; a key to our own sensitivity.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Knowing a fair amount about Art History, I'd say synesthesia has played a pretty insignificant role.

 

[fuzzyfelt]

Newly published: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0262514079/?tag=pfamazon01-20 (or newly republished?)

Thanks EnumaElish, that looks really interesting!

 

[fuzzyfelt]

Since Nabokov’s synaesthesia has been mentioned a bit, and his work noted for word-play and synaesthetic detail, I’ll mention that I’ve been looking at the risqué plant poetry of Erasmus Darwin, (Grand-father of Galton who wrote of synaesthesia, quoted in the OP, and Grand-father of Charles), also known for contributions to science, including anticipating Lamarck and his Grandson’s evolutionary ideas. His poetry was a national sensation once. With his poetry he said he wished to do for Linneas what Pope had done for Newton. Not drawing any longbows, but it maybe worth mentioning that the first google hit, a Guardian review, describes his work as “almost Nabokovian”.

 

[fuzzyfelt]

I hadn’t been so interested in number forms before, instead more in colour in cross-modality, but find “concepts” here interesting.

There may be a human capacity predisposed to number. This predisposition is seen in elementary numeracy discrepancy in many animals and in infants, and there is reason to believe that the ability to calculate is an extension of this.

It also seems that number and space are intimately connected. That, say, Arabic numerals are immediately mentally coded in an analogical representation of quantities, and these seem to occur spatially, along a “‘number line’ obeying Fechner’s law”, the direction of this being cultural.

Dehaene speculates that number forms are an unusually enriched version of this spatial-numerical association.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=...23YdQATlvAx2HMjb_J8SRGrS0#v=onepage&q&f=false
from page 41, and page 51.

 

[fuzzyfelt]

Knowing a fair amount about Art History, I'd say synesthesia has played a pretty insignificant role.

I disagree, but rather than going too far off topic here, I started a different thread in case there are any further comments.
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=404001

 

[TubbaBlubba]

Interesting! I've always experienced this.

For me, numbers are ordered in a very neat line; 1 2 3 4 5 6... etc, with size being uniform up to 20. 20 ~ 30 is more "squeezed together", and the rest of the tens aren't very clear unless I think about them, in which case a group of 10 numbers sort of fill up on a horizontal line in my "mind's eye". Once it gets up to 100, the digits become about two-three times as large. Here, I can for some reason see many more numbers than usual - I can clearly see, for instance, 270 ~ 310, but not 40 ~ 70.

1000 is for some reason smaller again, and it pretty much goes on except in a more "zoomed out" fashion. Once I get up to about a million, I only see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc up to 10, and then there's about as much space between 1 and 10 as between 10 and 100 (million). I have a roughly similar view of billions, but not a very well developed sense of trillions or quadrillions for most likely obvious reasons.

Now, for weekdays, they're ordered a similar way. They're basically ordered on a horizontal line, and I see them as text; Usually mon tue wed thur fri SAT SUN. For some reason, Saturday and Sunday are always larger and more spaced out. A funny thing is that while I don't *see* colors in the image, I still perceive the weekdays as having colors; monday is blue, tuesday is yellow, orange is orange-beige, thursday is brown, friday is green, saturday is yellow, sunday is white.

Let's see... The year. This one is odd. My year goes counter-clockwise in a skewed wheel (the upper part is much larger), starting with January at 6, February at 5, March at 4, April at 3:30, May at 3, June at 2, July at 1, August at 12 (My birthday is in August, probably why), etc until December, which is at 7. They're basically "written" along the "clock" (not an actual clock, just the best way I could describe it) and I can zoom into see the dates ordered up next to each other, usually written above the weekdays, though I don't have a very good sense of dates, to be quite honest. A funny thing is that, and I've never thought of this before, the numbers are actually ordered right-to-left in august and second half of July and they continue this way until December.

Lesse... What more... Years. They're just ordered in a regular fashion like the numbers. Though the 2000's are more "elevated" (like, towards me) than the rest.

I also see words that I hear in front of me. Oh yeah, and when I hear music (voices too, I think) I see it in front of me, kind of like a "chart". If it's singing involved it's more like a jagged line, if it's something like a piano piece I usually see a note sheet in front of me. I also have a tendency to see two hands playing piano whenever I hear piano music, not sure if that's related or just an association.

Oh yeah, the alphabeth.
A B C D E F G H
I J K L M N

After that, it gets complicated. They kind of show up in pairs, O P, Q R, S T, U V, on a vertical line.
then X Y Z Å Ä Ö neatly ordered like the first two lines. I remember that I had much harder learning the letters after N, and I still have to think an extra moment for most of the ones between N and Z; it's not obvious to me that R is before T, for instance.