It's not so elementary

I have a new theory for the realms of personality types and learning styles: some people are deductive thinkers, while others are inductive thinkers. I'm one of the latter. This is something I have been vaguely aware of for some time, but it just recently crystallized.

I've spent most of the past month studying for my prelims, which has mostly involved vast amounts of reading. Now, in the final stretches, I am in the process of organizing and condensing the information and ideas. This is a process I've done many times in the course of my academic career, and I have to admit I'm damned good at it.

On the other hand, in the breaks from studying, I'm currently reading a rather complex novel. For the present topic, the relevant aspect is that the narrative is woven between three characters who are somehow related to each other, but their relationship is not explained. There are a number of subtle (to me, anyway) clues, and I've been struggling to put the pieces together and make some sense of it. This is not my forte. My husband, on the other hand, would have had the whole thing figured out fifty pages ago without batting an eye.

It dawned on me last night that these two things are related. The studying process is a case of inductive reasoning. The assembling of clues is a case of deductive reasoning.

Now that I've put the pieces together, a lot of things fit into this framework. As an inductive reasoner, I am really good at sifting through vast amounts of information, identifying organizing principles, and boiling it all down. That's why I'm so good at both sides of the academic game. I can pick up just about anything by distilling it to a few basic ideas (in chem101, for example, I figured out that all I needed to know was that electrons are negative, everything else fell into place from there). I'm also really good at explaining things to other people for the same reason, which makes me a good teacher.

On the other hand, my relative weakness on the deductive side is in line with my inability to solve the mystery before Monk does. (And the accompanying frustration when Eric gives me that "I've got it!" look twenty minutes into the show.) It also explains my struggles with the research side of the PhD process. The standard scientific method is structured around deductive reasoning, using a few ideas to establish a hypothesis and designing a way to test it. That's just not my thing. So the project I'm actually working on is designed inductively. Fortunately, I happen to be in an interdisciplinary informatics program in which that sort of thing is allowed, even encouraged (or at least it should be).

Bathroom creativity

Why is it that bathrooms seem to be so conducive to thinking interesting thoughts? From the fabled "Eureka!" moment in the bathtub, to the common notion that showers are a good opportunity to contemplate life, to books designed to be read on the toilet, to the two times in recent memory I've had flashes of insight about my research while brushing my teeth, there seems to be something about the place that fosters creativity. Is it the reflective surfaces? The vulnerability and openness that comes with being naked (not so much for the teeth brushing)? The mere fact that it's a little bit of time when you aren't thinking about anything in particular? Something in the water, so to speak?

I did a quick search on Google Scholar to see if any psychologists had tackled the question, but didn't come up with anything. Does anybody know a psych major looking for a research topic?

The geographer's dog

It seems our dog, Othello, has rather acute spatial awareness. Several months ago, when he was just a puppy (not that he isn't still a puppy), he was playing with a toy in the kitchen. Before putting in a built-in pantry, we used to have a strange "hallway" from the kitchen into the main hallway of the house. The "hallway" was about 3 feet by 3 feet, and was little more than dead space behind the coat closet. At the time, we had a stand-alone cabinet in the space, which didn't quite fill it. His toy rolled behind the cabinet. He couldn't fit through to get at the toy, so he went out of the kitchen, around the other side of the coat closet, and to the other side of the "hallway" to look for it.

More recently, we were playing "tuggies." Essentially a mini tug-of-war between his mouth and my hand. I was letting him win the territorial part of the war, so he was going backward, with all of his visual attention focused forward on the toy and me. He backed out the door of a room, into the hallway, and knew exactly when to turn so his butt didn't run into the opposite wall of the hallway.

Othello is the first dog I've ever had, so I don't know how remarkable this ability is, but it seems pretty amazing to me.

Literally?

One of my pet peeves is the misuse of "literally." "Literally" has a very specific meaning, it indicates that, while an expression you have used is typically meant figuratively, in this case you mean exactly what the words say, the literal meaning. For example, when I say I literally have a ton of apples my backyard, I mean I have not just some unspecified large amount (a figurative "ton") but 2,000 pounds (a literal ton) of apples in my backyard. Unfortunately, it seems to have come to be used just to provide emphasis.

In his speech announcing his naming as Obama's running mate, Joe Biden said "literally" at least half a dozen times. In his case, it wasn't quite so grating because most of the time the expression he was referring to wasn't typically figurative. So, in the narrow sense, he was speaking literally.

What was worse was the NBC commentator on men's platform diving last night who stated that one of the divers "literally fell to pieces." Yucky! Was the man decomposing in the pool? Did he have severe leprosy, fingers and toes plunking into the water from the platform? Since they were still diving and not draining the pool for a thorough cleaning I somehow doubt that she actually meant it literally.