Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Number Gender ?

Very interesting. My husband I watched a documentary on neurological "abnormalities" where they interviewed people who have synesthesia.
I believe one of the men or women had tastes associated with sound. So during an orchestra performance they would experience different tastes in their mouths.

No one in my family experiences synesthesia, although both girls were able to do mental math very early by closing their eyes and picturing the number of "items" we were working with. Mainly m&m's for C-dog!. I always thought it cool that if I asked them addition or subtraction when they were three(?) and they didn't know the answer, I would tell them to close their eyes and tell them to see the numbers of m$m's in their mind's eye. Then they instantly knew the answer.

You should see me when it's time to buy a car, LOL! We're not the only data junkies here, as I'm sure you'll see...

Did I tell you about the time I bought a new car over the phone?

I think the salesmen hated me. I had three different salesmen calling me with numbers, playing with the numbers.

I refused to come into the dealership until I had the numbers where I wanted them.

When I came in to buy the car the salesman asked if I wanted to see the car. No, I said, where is the paperwork.

After it all checked out, hubby and I were getting ready to sign everything. He asked again if I wanted to see the car.

I was like, why?

Neato - You have me ROFL this week! I love it.

This actually sounds like something we might do. We crunch all the numbers, do the research, and make our spreadsheets. By the time we're ready to move on something like this, it's already a done deal.

And in my world, evens are girls, boys are odd. For obvious reasons. (Just kidding to the guys out there!)

hee hee hee hee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Go Ebeth!! Thanks for the ton of great articles, I am checking them out. Especially interested in the one about musical notes; might have to call my musical-mathy sister about that one (different sister).

I do the same thing sometimes....give 3 different answers to a question before anyone else responds, but what the heck? So far no one's complained!

Thanks everyone for all the info! There is a funny (in a good way), complicated list of colors and numbers and genders on the random-acts-of-sanity blog:
"
O=male, grandfather, white
1=male, father figure, black
2-female, married to one, yellow
3-female, daughter of 1 and 2, red
4=male, 3's brother, blue
5=male, 4's buddy, black and blue
6=male, 7's little brother, green
7=female, 8 and 9's daughter,brown
8=female, 9's wife, orange
9=male, 8's husband, dark brown
10=male, 9's father, black and white
"
Totally amazing! - I am pretty darn visual, but completely number-color free.

ROFL! Why, indeed!?!

I'm sorry I missed this last night.

Oh yeah.

Its called synesthesia.

Most REALLY good mathematicians and musicians do this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia

I don't think that I have synesthesia, just a natural tendency to 'make stories' and 'quite an imagination' - but as a child, I thought that everyone saw the odd numbers as male, and the even numbers as female.

Here's what I thought around Kindy:

0 - neither boy nor girl
1,7,9 - males who are masculine and fit the model.
2,6,8 - females who are feminine and fit the model.
3,5 - males who have don't fit the steriotype
4 - female who don't fit the steriotype.

I thought 8 was the most obviously female, with all those curves, and that 7 was clearly the meanest, with that pointy elbow. As an adult I heard the joke that ends 'because 7 8 9!' and agreed that it was the kind of thing 7 would do, but that clearly 7 hasn't been eating much of anything lately, because it's so skinny!(Even now, I'm noticing that the 7 in this type font are a little unbalanced: I prefer my sevens to have a bit longer downstroke relative to their 'hat' width.

Later when trying to learn the 7 times tables I saw that 7 is indeed a meanie!

I remember that I got in trouble because I wanted to write the 2's with the little circle, so they would by more clearly 'girly' - but the teacher told me that beginers had to write 2 without the little circle. I also prefered to make my 4's that looked more like an H, than an A, because I felt that the open tops were more feminine: open and enclosing,like a hug while the closed top 4 was more masculine: Pointy and sharp, like an arrow.

I had a preety steriotypical view of males and females in 1st grade, but I think it's interesting how my thought processes worked, and how I wanted the data to fit the theory.

I asked DS12 last night if he assigned gender to numbers. He said:

8 - neutral
2,3,7 - female
1,6,9 - male

So much for my literary psychoanalysis of 7 and 8!

DS's next question was:
'Does 10 belong with 1-10 or 10-19?'

nice leap, I thought.

Smiles,
grinity