True story. When I was a freshman at MIT in 1966, we rowed several of the 8-oared crew shells through the locks & into Boston Harbor. We were doing fine until a huge ship went by, sending out an enormous wake. Our coach yelled at us to turn our boats "parallel to the wave", but all of us being engineers/mathematicians/physicists just out of 8.01 & 18.02, we dutifully turned the main axis of our boats parallel to the _wave vector_. One of the boats was then lifted by its bow & stern -- leaving the center unsupported -- and broke in half, leaving 8 MIT oarsmen & 1 coxswain in the water! Since only engineers/mathematicians/physicists would even consider the wave vector, rather than the crest of the wave, as the axis to align to, we were undone by knowing "too much". At 11:44 AM 8/30/2010, James Buddenhagen wrote:

Interesting. I always assumed that people who had trouble with maps, cardinal directions, etc. were not math people. Perhaps it is because I was around maps since a child that I have always puzzled that some people have trouble with them. When heavy fog or overcast I get lost much easier than on clear sunny days, but I do not consciously think about the sun or shadows.