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Comment by rakk | Hacker News Reader

I have this with numbers (and consequently arithmetic). When I think of a number, in my mind I see its position in a never ending, wavy line of numbers that goes from left bottom to top right. This 'ribbon' of numbers kinda scales logarithmically and I can 'adjust my view' to 'look at' higher/lower numbers. Now that I think of it, I mostly use/see this ribbon when adding or subtracting numbers, not when multiplying or dividing.

Don't know if it's related but in one of my first classes as a kid (where we learned to count), we had some sort of banner on the wall that listed the number from 0 to 100. Maybe picked it up there.. Sometimes I also think this makes the more abstract math concepts harder for me to understand. If I can't visualize it, it won't stick (easily).

Asked some friends how they saw numbers, and they don't have anything like that. Wondering how this is for other people.

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This is called a number form:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_form

Wow. This rung a bell for me. I wouldn't have known how to put it so concisely, but this is exactly how numbers automatically reveal themselves to me visually when I'm considering them.

If only that extended to the size estimation part of my brain. I've gotten pretty okay at eyeballing kitchen measurements, but I'm completely useless at determining what will fit in the back of my car when shopping at Home Depot without a tape measure.

Wow, did you actually hear a bell in your head??!

I've got a cursor in my head that I mentally move around and click and select things with. When I go insane, I'll probably experience somebody else moving my cursor around, instead of voices in my head.

I wonder if people used to think like typewriters, and heard a right margin bell as they thought, and then had to mentally hit carriage return every 87 characters before they could think any more...

I can report a similar visual. Mine isn't wavy, it's straight line from bottom left to top right in which each unit has a sort of notch division.

Aaaaand having to actually explain it seems to have completely messed the whole visual up. At this point I feel like I'm inventing a system based on childhood memories...

It does stretch back to my childhood though. I have strong memories of visualizing numbers in class, even specific problems like when we were asked to add all the numbers from 1 to 100. A problem in which I mentally drew half circles from 99 to 1, 98 to 2 and so on. I solved it almost instantly and thinking back I'm a little disappointed my teacher didn't investigate this more and help me explore this skill.

My internal number line exists as a ribbon of squares laying flat (i.e roughly parallel to the ground plane, although they exist floating in an infinite black space). From zero, it goes right to left, then turns around at 10 and goes back behind that line from left to right and then loops around again at 20 in front of the first line. Also, at this point the "camera" turns around following the line, such that it is now viewed behind the first line, going left to right. From there it proceeds in a straight line, with a slight incline, and then plateaus at 100.

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