Here in Santa Barbara, the entire street grid is rotated almost exactly 45 degrees: when we say "East", we really mean "North-East", etc. Santa Barbara is really confused: it has one of the few East-West mountain ranges, but then chose as the place for the wharf one of the few beaches at a 45 degree angle to the mountains, and then positioned its street grid parallel/perpendicular to that beach. There is one prominent church in town that is positioned correctly with its main axis East-West, thereby putting it at a 45 degree angle with the street grid. Santa Barbara isn't named after a saint (who hasn't even been a saint since 1969), but merely a date from the Catholic calendar: December 4th. For some strange reason I can't fathom, Santa Barbara is the patron saint of mathematicians. At 12:00 PM 8/30/2010, Stephen B. Gray wrote:
I lived on the East Coast for 36 years. When I moved to L.A. I realized that my sense of direction depended on which way the ocean was. It was actually quite difficult to adjust to the ocean being on the west. Then I visited Orlando, where the ocean is in both directions. Hopeless.
Steve Gray
On 8/30/2010 11:12 AM, Hilarie Orman wrote:
Yes, I have a weak sense of left/right and also the difficulty with 180 degree rotations on maps. Sunrise or sunset helps a lot, but foggy days are impossible.
When I left California and went to college in the East, it seemed to me that the sun set on the wrong side. A friend of mine in a similar situation said that we had such a strong mental image of the Sierra Nevada in the east that we could not adjust to having the sun set behind it, even though we were thousands of miles away. I never came up with a better explanation.
I'm a calendar boustrphedonist. When visualizing a weekend, I go from Saturday down to Sunday, then reverse direction for the following week.
-> Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Tue Mon Sun<-
This causes me endless confusion, but the adjacency of days is so firmly fixed in my mind that I cannot force a discontuity between Saturday and Sunday.
Eiralih
From: James Propp<jpropp@cs.uml.edu> Subject: [math-fun] left vs. right Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2010 13:11:48 -0400
hvm writes:
I still have difficulty with left and right; for the longest time I had to stop and think about which hand I wrote with. Or ... .
While we're discussing such things, I wonder if other math-funsters have my peculiar sort of trouble with using maps: If I'm heading north, navigating is easy; if I'm heading east or west, I do the appropriate 90 degree rotation; but if I'm heading south, I can't do a 180 degree rotation, so I *pretend* I'm going north (travelling the reverse of the route I actually want to take), figure out what I need to do, and then reverse the instructions (so that left turns becomes right turns and vice versa).
Jim Propp _______________________________________________
hvm writes:
I still have difficulty with left and right; for the longest time I had to stop and think about which hand I wrote with. Or ... .
While we're discussing such things, I wonder if other math-funsters have my peculiar sort of trouble with using maps: If I'm heading north, navigating is easy; if I'm heading east or west, I do the appropriate 90 degree rotation; but if I'm heading south, I can't do a 180 degree rotation, so I *pretend* I'm going north (travelling the reverse of the route I actually want to take), figure out what I need to do, and then reverse the instructions (so that left turns becomes right turns and vice versa).
Jim Propp