Re: OT: The Geek defense

On Fri, 29 Feb 2008 06:12:00 -0000, tim <TimJ@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 20:02:24 -0600, Robert wrote:

Then I tried one section of the military General Classification Test
(GCT) called Spatial Relationships. It was multiple choice with no words,
just pictures of two dimensional patterns you had to mentally fold and
rotate. Bingo. The correlation was over .90. Notably, the highest scorers finished
fastest, in as little as half the allotted time which was 12 minutes for
20 questions. The instructions said no one was expected to finish in 20
minutes.

Very interesting. Why would such a correlation exist?

Most people solve these logic problems by first translating them into words and evaluating
the choices one at a time. They say to themselves 'A. is not correct because the dot and
shaded corner are 180 degrees apart, they need to be 90 degrees. B. might be right; I'll
come back to that. etc..'

High scorers do not use words, and they evaluate the five choices in parallel. They look
at the five choices and SEE which one is correct. Imagine the task transformed to color
matching, with the antecedent a blue circle and the five consequents various geometric
shapes having different colors. Even an average person would not examine the choices one
by one; he would look at all five, pick out the two circles, then pick the blue one of the
two; alternatively, pick out the three blue objects, then the one that's a circle. An
average person could solve the problem in one second. Programmers solve logic problems the
same way.

The general explanation is good programmers solve logic problems non-verbally. When I
think about an abstract programming issue, lets say a parser, I see an IMAGE of words
broken apart. When I explain it to someone, I use my hands a lot, as though gesturing at a
whiteboard. I'm pointing at the images I see and expressing the parsing process in words
for the first time. That explains the correlation between programming and music; both are
non-verbal forms of expressing abstractions.

.

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