
Men Are Better at Maps Until Women Take This Course - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/32/space/men-are-better-at-maps-until-women-take-this-course
======
IsaacL
Can any deep learning experts answer a related question I have? What's the
state of the art in recognising rotated 3d objects?

I know that deep learning systems can recognise, e.g., different animal toys
held in the hand, at different distances from the camera. How about shapes
which are rotated? (I assume shapes rotated with the same face showing the
camera are fairly trivial to recognise, I mean the other two rotations -
'pitch' and 'yaw').

I have a hunch that humans have a ton of perceptual hardware devoted to
precisely this task, and that deep neural nets are going to have a hard time
cracking it. Is my hunch accurate?

~~~
DanBC
You may be interested in the "four mountains test" \- a test for early
diagnosis of dementia.

Audio:
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03h7htk](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03h7htk)

------
rdl
I'm really interested in which "intelligence" metrics can't be
trained/learned. It seems obvious to me that playing with the specific blocks
or diagrams used in an IQ test helps; and that practicing with one set seems
to make me better able to do well with another only indirectly related set.

~~~
tinco
I'm not an expert, but I researched this once. You can train any particular
question that's asked at an IQ test, but someone can always think of new IQ
test questions that you will fail if you're not smart enough (i.e. your brain
adapts to new problems fast enough). There is a training program (I forgot the
name) that trains you at solving IQ test problems sort of in general but it's
unclear if it just trains people at solving the sort of questions that IQ test
people tend to think of.

The way I understand it the most reliable way of training for plasticity if it
is possible at all is to learn as many different things as you can. That
means: Learn to program, learn a language with a different root (Chinese),
learn to dance, learn woodworking, learn to practice law, learn to do team
sport, etc.. Basically have as many hobbies as you can. (Switching every X
months) making sure they have as little in common as possible.

Here's a talk on how long it takes to become 'good enough' at anything:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MgBikgcWnY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MgBikgcWnY)

Have fun ;)

~~~
yamaneko
Such a great advice! Thank you.

Do you engage yourself on different hobbies such as you suggested? When do you
stop one hobbie and move to another one?

------
SeanDav
> _" helped boost retention rates for female engineering students by 20 to 30
> percent."_

Actually they do themselves a disservice with these numbers. while it is true
that out of 100 students, 20-30 more will graduate, the pass (retention) rate
goes up by 40-60%.

------
kriro
I wonder if playing (mono colored) tangram[1] a lot as a kid helped my
abilities. My sisters also liked the game and didn't find the typical
rotational tasks on IQ tests harder than any of the other tasks. It's only 2d
though, I'd be interested if solving 2d puzzles helps with understanding the
3d questions (like folding cubes).

I'd like to see them compare their course to other tasks that might seem
intuitively helpful. Folding origami with instructions is one thing that
immediately comes to mind.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangram](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangram)

------
blakesterz
So how do we apply this? I have a daughter struggling in math and I'd love to
help her, if this is a magic bullet where do I find it. I only see mention of
a "15 hour course" in this article.

~~~
thesz
The family of Sofia Kovalevskaya was so poor they used pages from math book as
wallpaper.

I have to note that my father did that trick too (made a poster with algebraic
defs, etc and put it above my study table). I am relatively good at math.

------
tokenadult
I saw comments asking for links to some of the program materials mentioned in
the article, and while searching for those, I found a site[1] that appears to
link to a wealth of information about spatial reasoning and training programs
to improve spatial reasoning. Enjoy.

[1] [http://www.iwitts.org/proven-practices/retention-sub-
topics/...](http://www.iwitts.org/proven-practices/retention-sub-
topics/spatial-reasoning)

------
douche
From the title, I was expecting this to be about navigation and map-reading,
more than these classic spatial rotation problems. I'm not sure what it is,
but I've certainly noticed that my mother, my sister, my aunts, all of my
girlfriends, virtually everyone I've ever taken a roadtrip with with double X
chromosomes, have struggled mightily with what I'll call "locational
awareness" \- tracking where they are vs where they have been vs where they
are trying to go. Some of these have been brilliant people, but their brains
just don't seem to work that way.

I don't know if the ubiquity of GPS is helping or hurting this phenomenon.

------
reacweb
IMHO, there is a statistical bias. A woman would not take this course if she
struggle with the other mandatory courses or if she is not very motivated in
studies.

------
joefarish
What if men also take the course?

~~~
krisoft
Described in the article. It improves their score on spatial tests too, but
has no effect on long term retention.

~~~
thesz
_small effect_ on retention, not the "no effect".

Also it is interesting how "small" effect is, is it absolutely or relatively
small?

Anyway, my small experiment had told me that even girly girls who participate
in more or less manly sport activity (namely, karate) would score quite high
in the tests from article. I actually tested several girls from karate group
with the test like that, they were better than boys (though boys were older
than girls).

------
ndonnellan
I can't help but think VR will make for some amazing "hands-on" experiences
when it comes to teaching spatial concepts or abstract ones that have good
analogs. Being able to poke and prod literally infinite shapes, from the real
world or not, will probably make science and engineering more fun for
everybody.

However, I may be a bit biased. I did back the Oculus kickstarter.

------
qb45
> “If it was only cultural, it should be different in some cultures. It has to
> be some kind of biological factor, whether it’s hormones or evolution,” says
> Sorby.

By this logic, the use of fire for cooking is "some kind of hormones or
evolution thing", not culture. _(Or are there any cultures that never cook?)_

~~~
masklinn
> By this logic, the use of fire for cooking is "some kind of hormones or
> evolution thing", not culture.

That's not impossible at this point: humans don't fare that well on completely
raw diet with studies of raw vegan diets show increases in amenorrhoea,
underweightness, dental erosion and lower bone densities (raw non-vegan diet
being possibly even riskier due to high concerns of food poisoning and food-
borne diseases). Richard Wrangham has argued that modern humans are in fact
obligate cooks (though he's also argued that modern human evolution was
triggered by cooking, I know most anthropologists disagree with the latter,
not sure about the former, could be an interesting question to ask in
/r/askscience)

~~~
qb45
OK, but if you raise a group of people somewhere in the middle of nowhere on
100% raw food, I'd hazard the guess that they'll sooner die of malnutrition or
diseases than instinctively approach some fire and start cooking.

And if this isn't culture then I don't know what is.

------
pstrateman
Sure.. now what happens when men are given the same course?

------
dawnbreez
This is a dupe, but I can't find the original or my comment on it. I suspect
the original was deleted.

My comment was something along the lines of this:

You can learn new skills by taking classes on them. In other news, scientists
identify fluffy white object in sky as a 'cloud'.

~~~
dang
It wasn't deleted:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11001091](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11001091).

On HN, though, please don't make snarky, shallow dismissals of new work. (It's
far from obvious that you can learn _any_ new skill by taking a class on it,
and there's other interesting stuff in this article.)

