Is Spatial Ability the "Geek Gene"?

A good comment from the original blog submitted here:<p>"It sounds to me like spatial ability may predict success in CS1 because that is the way we TEACH CS1. If we taught it a different way, different students would succeed."<p>And perhaps if people with different kinds of minds moved into computer science, some problems that now appear intractable would appear easy to those people. Diversity of thinking styles appears to be good for a developing discipline.

I personally know people who are totally incapable of anything spatial but are very good with logic and maths. I score rather highly in standardised spatial tests myself, but I rarely think visually about algorithms or data structures. I found that doing so keeps me thinking inside the box, literally.<p>Many abstract problems are high dimensional and items are linked by functional relationships that are very difficult to express visually. I've seen so many people cripple their understanding of problems by forcing them into diagrams that are just plain wrong in some important respect.<p>I believe spatial thinking works very well for some things but completely breaks down for others. Just a very simple example. It's pretty easy to visualise a set of three numbers: {2, 7, 4}. Just put them into boxes. But now try to visualise the set of all primes or the set of all sets that do not contain themselves.<p>Even for sets that are finite at a particular point in time, like the set of adults, thinking of them as items in a box is very misleading. What would have to be visualised is really the membership criterion. But that set still contains items at a particular point in time, so how do you visualise the relationship between the membership criterion and those items?<p>I know what happens at that point. Vague visual analogies that keep readers of popular science magazines happy but have very little utility for actually doing research start to creep in.<p>But dont' get me wrong. I know very well that visualising things can help to understand many things very well. Just not all things, and the problem is that people don't know where to stop trying.

Alan Kay had a talk in which he claimed there were three ways of reasoning: kinesthetic, visual and symbolic. Presumably mapping the problem on to the various existing bits of hardware in the brain.<p>If this is true multiple lecture streams would seem best. I've never understood why all universities think they have to have their own lecturers and courses. Mostly the lecturer just cribs the notes from someone else's and completes the process by reading them aloud to a bored or empty room.

I went to an art school in brooklyn &#38; learned 3d design as part of a formal spatial program. The big insight that was beat into us is to start by simply symbolizing an object - squint at it until the rest blurs away - and then gauge/adjust/repeat the relationships between the pieces you're left with. Persist until it's second nature and it'll be powerful magic for a designer in any field. Abstraction can be rather useful, in a conference room or a startup.<p>here's some background:<p><a href="http://www.rowenafund.org/about/rrk_about_rowena.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.rowenafund.org/about/rrk_about_rowena.html</a><p><a href="http://boxesandarrows.com/view/foundations-of" rel="nofollow">http://boxesandarrows.com/view/foundations-of</a>

Anecdotal evidence inbound.<p>I know I am a very visual thinker. When given a box of parts I can visualize how they fit together in my head. I can take things apart and put them together different ways without actually touching them.<p>It took me a long time that not everyone thinks that way; and it was the source of a lot of frustration for me that people wouldn't get what I was saying.<p>I don't know if it makes visual thinking a geek gene, but it certainly does help in reasoning about problems. You can treat a lot of software as a set of mechanical problems versus abstract ideas. If you can flip a picture of something around in your head, it makes it easy to see if something will work or not; you know immediately if the parts won't fit.

Surprised no one has mentioned how men consistently outperform women at spacial ability tests. Perhaps that would explain why there are more male hackers. Or is that just too logical ;)<p>eg <a href="http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/133575.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/133575.php</a>

I'd be interested in what the content of that course he mentions (to strengthen spatial ability) is like. It'd be interesting to see if it helps even those who are gifted in the area.<p>It seems like spacial ability also gives one somewhat of an advantage on IQ tests, since these seem to be disproportionately focused on spacial transformation questions.

I <i>never</i> understand things from textbooks or from other people. I have to work it out myself. (I've come top of my class at uni, so it works for me). This is in line with the article's <i>internalization</i> point.<p>I'm also wary of reducing my understanding to code or even written notes before it is settled, because it is much more malleable in the mind. This is in line with the article's <i>transformability</i>.<p>Interesting point about gestures. My thinking is very kinesthetic, so I might try that.

It's said that musicians make good programmers.<p>One point of similarity is that both can use their "shape brains" to solve problems.<p>For musicians other than pianists, a common way to memorize a piece is to pay it repeatedly, each time moving the music stand farther away. Distance obscures more and more details.<p>I've been able to find problems by printing out code and stepping back until I could just see the structure. Yes, this only works given consistent indentation.

Years ago, I enjoyed reading books about how to do arithmetic mentally and quickly (there are several of them - one good one is "Math Magic" by Scott Flansburg). There did not seem to be anything equivalent for more abstract math, i.e. algebra and calculus. For some reason, I cared so much that I actually took the trouble to write a couple of books about it (<a href="http://hilomath.com/" rel="nofollow">http://hilomath.com/</a>).<p>To figure out what to write, I actually sat down with an old algebra text book, and while solving the problems in my head, very carefully observed what I did and how... then wrote down how it all worked, using words and images. This process was about a hundred times harder than it sounds; had I any clue how hard it would have been, I probably never would have started.<p>Anyway, for doing abstract/symbolic math mentally, the method I came up with defines three levels of fundamental mental skills that are learned in succession, and build on each other:<p><pre><code> * visualization * representations * mental algorithms </code></pre> Visualization is just the ability to see things in your mind's eye - precise and conscious command of imagination, really. I never met a good engineer who didn't have this ability very well developed, but believe it or not, many people in the world don't. Anyway, IMO it is something that can be cultivated, so the first part of the first book is focused on doing that.<p>What I called "representations" has to do how we encode information mentally. To give a programming example, how do you visualize a linked list data structure? Well, probably most of us (I'm assuming you're a hacker/math hat here) have a visual model in which there is some repeated symbol representing the nodes, and some aspect of the symbol that represents a pointer to another node, with these nodes arranged in a line (as opposed to a 2D grid, or random cluster, etc.). Perhaps you even visualize lines connecting the node-symbols (i.e. pointers to the next node). There are infinite possible variants, and maybe you do it differently. Importantly, your visual model will omit encoding much information that happens to not be immediately relevant (such as the endianness of the data stored, etc.)<p>Bringing it back to math, consider the equation (x+3)/(2x+4)=1. Let's assume you can solve that in your head. (If not, you need to read my book :) Maybe try it right now, and notice how you visualize the equation and its symbols, and how you move or manipulate the symbols as you solve it. An obvious first step is to bring the denominator on the left over to the right side. Mentally, you probably see this as the movement of the expression "2x+4" as a whole unit. You chunk it as a single object, then break it up into smaller objects later when that's needed.<p>The next level is what I'm calling mental algorithms, which I won't describe here - for most of the people reading this, it's just what it sounds like.

Interesting article, and one that brings to mind one of my pet peeves: when people say "I'm a visual learner" to use as excuse for not understanding a point or concept. They then usually need someone to literally draw it out for them.<p>My main problem with this is the fact that, as humans, we are all visual animals. We are not bats (aural), dogs (olfactory), snakes (tasters) or some creature that relies primarily on our sense of touch. We are humans and we are all visual learners - everything is easier to learn for everyone if it's drawn out.<p>What this article pointed out to me is that our individual abilities to visualize concepts differ. While some people need it drawn out for them, some are able to draw it out for themselves in their mind.

"The fact that we in computing keep trying to visualize introductory computing concepts is another piece of evidence for me that spatial ability is linked to success with computing. We naturally try to use visualizations of algorithms and data structures in order to communicate how we imagine these computing processes and structures. However, there's some evidence that this is the wrong answer.<p>A visualization may not be designed so that it's cognitively easy to process or easy to learn from. Worse, providing the visualization may prevent the student from internalizing the spatial mental model. You can only succeed in computing (my hypothesis suggests) if you can mentally transform your spatial models. If it's concretely in front of you, you may not develop that ability. Some of the SILC results suggest (to me, at least) that gesture may be a better way to communicate the spatial model. Gesture is ephemeral, and still serves to communicate spatial meaning."<p>My take: in computing, "visualizing" how systems work actually requires thinking in N dimensions. If you try to represent something composed of a large number of dimensions in 2D or 3D, then of <i>course</i> you lose a <i>lot</i> of semantic context. But if you have to explain such an N-dimensional concept or structure to someone, of course you'll probably try to dump the model on a piece of 2D paper and the person you're explaining to will never really get it if he sticks to the 2D representation. "Internalizing" the model is simply reverse-engineering the 2D model back to the real N-dimensional model.<p>If you try to represent something N-dimensional in M dimensions where M &#60; N, you lose information and your new model will never be able to represent the full reality of the original model.

I am the counterexample. I have always been relatively poor at visualization and spatial manipulation. That said, I am not a spectacular programmer, and rely more on my ability to cut through to the real concerns of people than on my ability to create innovative technical solutions.

Can anyone recommend resources / activities to improve spatial visualization abilities? I would think this would help everyone become a better critical thinker. Thanks.

That is a rather interesting premise. More anecdotal evidence inbound!<p>When I undertook an IQ test a couple of years ago, I scored significantly higher in spatial ability to the majority of the other abilities tested. I'm also a self-taught programmer, and I do reasonably well, I'd like to think.

non-linear data relationships seems to be the dividing line to me. being able to compartmentalize concepts in different ways and then play with the relationships between compartments.