Can you draw a bicycle?

Thursday, February 6th, 2020

We overestimate our ability to explain how things work. Cognitive psychologist Rebecca Lawson at the University of Liverpool measured how well people understand how everyday objects work using the bicycle:

I have given the test to over 200 students and parents coming to Open Days at the University. Over 96% had learnt to cycle as children with a further 1.5% learning as adults and less than 3% never having learned. Also 52% of this group owned a bicycle. Sadly, the figures on actual cycling were low, with just 1% cycling most days, 4% cycling around once a week and 9% cycling about once a month. The vast majority either never cycle (52%) or rarely do so (33%). Nevertheless, even for these non-cyclists, bicycles are a common sight. Secondly, if Rozenblit and Keil are correct, people should greatly over-estimate their understanding of how bicycles work because bicycle parts are visible and they seem to be simple, mechanical devices.

Draw a Bicycle Figure 1

I first asked people to draw a bicycle and I then asked them to select which of four alternatives were correct for the frame, the pedals and the chain, see Figure 1. I used the multiple choice test to check that errors that people made were not just due to problems with drawing or in my judgement of the accuracy of their drawings, see Figure 2.

Draw a Bicycle Figure 2

I looked at three types of errors which would severely impair the functioning of a bicycle (see Figure 3 for examples of all three):

1. drawing the frame joining the front and back wheels (making steering impossible)

2. not placing the pedals between the wheels and inside the chain (the pedals were sometimes drawn attached to the front wheel, the back wheel or dangling off the cross-bar)

3. not putting the chain around the pedals and the back wheel (these errors were almost all because people drew the chain looping around both the front and the back wheel of the bicycle)

Draw a Bicycle Figure 3

It seems that many people have virtually no understanding of how bicycles work. This is despite bicycles being highly familiar and most people having learnt how to ride one. Most people know that turning the pedals drives one or both of the bicycle wheels forward, but they probably understand little more than this.

[...]

One last thing: unexpected sex effects. One finding that I was not looking for jumped out from the data. There were huge sex differences with females making many more errors than males.

[...]

Thus, at least for frame and chain errors, females make around twice as many errors as males. It could be argued that this is still a matter of experience. It is likely that boys cycle more than girls so many males who currently rarely cycle may have, over their lifetime, seen and used more bicycles than females. However the sex difference is even more extreme for those who claim to cycle around once a month, once a week or most days.

[...]

Not only do male non-cyclists make fewer errors than female non-cyclists, they also make fewer errors than female cyclists; whilst male cyclists make almost no errors.

Comments

  1. bob sykes says:

    Now that Medicare is my primary, I need to take an annual cognitive exam, part of which is drawing two intersecting pentagons.

    I don’t think the RN who administered the test knew what a pentagon was. She seemed surprised when I mentioned the name for the figures.

  2. Wilson says:

    People would probably do better if they started from scratch instead of being shown various incomplete and incorrect sketches

  3. Ross says:

    Hard to believe but…ok.

    It’s like going in reverse from Shakespeare back to a hundred monkeys on typewriters. Anyway…

    I’d like to see how these results segregate across the students and their parents. I expect a radical difference.

  4. Graham says:

    I haven’t ridden one for years and was able to approximate it just then.

    Surprisingly difficult to remember the proper shape of the frame more than very roughly. But the errors here in positioning the chain and pedals are striking.

    Maybe those people have the less common front wheel drive bikes. Now I’m curious if that’s a thing, and if it has any impact on operations.

  5. Graham says:

    Just looked at fig 2 instead of trying to free draw. SO without dwelling on it, it appears to be ABD.

    And on my earlier point, yes, I see that a FWD bike would make steering impossible. Wheee!

  6. Graham says:

    The ultimate test would be can you pick the correct bicycle configuration immediately after or before getting a correct drawing on the water jug test.

  7. Graham says:

    An interesting exercise would be to break down those results further based on this assumption:

    “It is likely that boys cycle more than girls so many males who currently rarely cycle may have, over their lifetime, seen and used more bicycles than females.”

    Is that actually true? I cycled mainly as a kid and teen, and it seemed a comparatively non-gendered form of exercise at that time and place. I would also have assumed more women than men kept it up in adulthood. Men tended to gravitate to cars or motorcycles. Wonder if that’s true in the UK?

  8. Kirk says:

    There are all-wheel drive bicycles, but they aren’t chain-driven…

    https://christinibicycles.com/

    What this is down to is a.) the essential uselessness of the multiple-choice question format, and b.) most people are mechanical idiots. Just trust me on that one–The mysteries of the mechanism for just about anything are beyond the ken for most “normal” human beings. The tinker is a distinctly different mentality, compared to the norm. The sort of kid who takes apart clocks to see how they work? That’s a tinker; the sort of person who looks at their environment as something to be modified to suit them? Tinker. Most people just accept what they find, and live with it, even if it doesn’t work. They don’t have the curiosity to even want to know how things go together, or how they work.

    Trust me on this–I’ve been watching all you other monkeys all my life, and this trait is one that separates you lot from mine. Average person has to be browbeaten into learning how to make something work, and will not ever develop the skills and understandings that build into being able to diagnose and fix the broken, or evaluate design for potential problems. It’s more than a spatial thing; you have to be able to marry spatial cognition with cause-and-effect, and lineal “If A, then B, then C…” progressions of things. Average person can maybe get to B or C; a technician has to be able to get all the way to about an F or a G, as a matter of course. Master technicians need to be able to work out things to around Q or S.

    Frankly, I suspect that most of the general population is going to get winnowed out when we make the intermediate jump past near-Earth orbit, and will have been culled entirely from the populations that eventually make it outside the solar system. Most of y’all simply cannot cope with bog-standard mechanisms and programs; the ability to improvise? LOL… You’re gonna need that if your genes are going to ever get off earth, and most of you just don’t have them.

    Forget racism–This is the true measure of a human being. Tool-using man, remember? Most of y’all simply do not qualify as such, and have been leaching off the technical efforts of the rest of us who do. At some point, your laughable grasp on these things is going to become a real survival trait, and most of you are going to wind up killing yourselves when you forget to latch the airlock door properly. We’re gonna have to cull your asses in simple self-defense.

    Frankly, after watching people who can’t fix shit all my life, and who’ve expected me to manage that for them, I’ve kinda reached a point of studied contempt for all of you lot who can’t be bothered, or who lack the mental acuity to do anything with the ordered world of technology. There’s a certain brand of self-entitlement that relies on the efforts of others, and we “others” are about done with the majority who parasitize our efforts, and who keep breaking shit through sheer malevolent laziness and failure to understand. One of these days, things like not returning a cart to the corral down at the supermarket are going to become self-actuating capital crimes, and you lot are going to self-eliminate yourselves from the population. Don’t be real surprised if we Morlocks are lending a helping hand to all you Eloi as the bills come due. Feigned or actual, incompetence is direly unattractive.

  9. Liam says:

    The front wheel drive would make it impossible to steer. So that is an error.

  10. Graham says:

    Well, I’d like to make at least some claim to life on behalf of the community of tool users as opposed to machine fixers- that is to say the ones who might not be able to fix things but can use them without breaking them.

    That might not be much, but there are people in that latter category.

    Now, you show me how to latch the airlock, or better yet leave me the instructions, I’ll latch it properly. And check it 10 times to make sure. I don’t wanna get spaced. Either from my own error or subsequent administrative punishment.

    Not that I’ll be there. I don’t think multiple g on launch or zero g in space would exactly be my biosystems’ cups of tea.

  11. Graham says:

    I’m also going to assume in advance that the interplanetary courier ships are going to have absurdly tight weight restrictions and NOT stow away on one.

    I hear there’s dispute about the realism of that incident, among engineers, but I’ll err on the side of caution and only travel places where I can afford a ticket.

  12. Graham says:

    Also, in the spacefaring society of the future, I call dibs on the nickname “Dirtside”.

    Makes me sound cooler than I am.

  13. Kirk says:

    Graham,

    That wasn’t directed at you, by the way. It’s more like a general angst this morning due to having to fix something for about the seventy-fifth time that people keep breaking because they’re too lazy/mechanically inept to manage a simple mechanism. I swear to God, there is a 9-to-1 ratio of “breakers” to “fixers” in this world, and I can attest to how ‘effing frustrating it is to keep having to fix crap behind them.

    I swear, one of these days, the revolution is gonna come, and all of those “can’t figure it out, so I’ll just break it” types are going to wind up being put into some sort of segregation so they quit driving the “fixers” crazy with their willful ineptitude. You know–The kind of people who ignore the clearly written diagrams and pictures on the outside of packaging, that tell you how to open them? “Oh, that’s too hard… I’ll just cut it open with a knife…”.

    Swear to God, it ought to be an affirmative defense at trial for murder. “He just tore the box open like kind of an animal!!!”.

  14. Paul from Canada says:

    It is not just mechanical things.

    I was flabbergasted to read a couple of years ago about a study on the ability to use a computer.

    I am the awkward age of people for whom computers were brand new technology, and the VIC-20 was state of the art and only really dedicated nerds learned to use them. I really didn’t get to use computers until they invaded the workplace in the early ’90′s.

    I can’t program, and my knowledge of computers is sufficient to use them for my work, and personal stuff like this, but I know enough to use them as effective tools to get my work done, and if pressed, I can learn to use a new program or system.

    Turns out, something like 75% of people cannot search an email program like Microsoft Outlook for previous emails, sent or received, on a particular topic.

    Blew my mind!

  15. RLVC says:

    Kirk, you seem like a guy too smart for his station. Have you considered ascending the technocrat ladder? Here’s an interesting book:

    https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Aerodynamics-Arguing-Real-Physics/dp/1119967511

    Build something new, small drone or big plane. Better peers, too.

  16. Graham says:

    Kirk,

    No worries. You touched a small nerve there but it was also all in good fun.

    My mechanical and digital aptitude is pretty limited but, from his later comment, I’m in roughly the age group and level of ability of Paul who is also from Canada.

    I take a special little thrill every time I figure out how to do some tiny thing with Windows, or my Blackberry, and I can certainly use them effectively and without difficulty to do my work. I can even use them well enough to eventually say, once I have figured out how to do what I want, WTF were those designers thinking, having realized their architecture is stupid.

    I’m also the sort who clings to an older tool because I assume some good feature will disappear in the new version, or because I can’t be arsed to learn another OS every couple of years when my organization signs some new contract.

    I was just in an email exchange about this this week with a longtime IT colleague. He berated my lack of a sense of wonder about each new iteration of software or other tools. I remember the Wonder that was Vista.

    Still, I marvel if it is true that so many people can’t use, or at least learn, simple features of Outlook. Space ‘em.

    Sidebar to all that because you reminded me with a reference to packaging. There are a few things I have wondered about over the past 25 years or so.

    1. Milk cartons have mostly gone to the spout and cap model, which is an improvement if arguably wasteful. But those that retain the traditional opening seem harder to open cleanly than they used to be.

    2. Toilet paper rolls used to work without sticking to themselves at the beginning and peeling off ply by ply.

    3. Plastic packaging used to require less cunning and force to open.

    Am I just buying cheap quality stuff or what? Whenever anyone asks me to substantiate any notion of decline within the general atmosphere of technological progress, those are my top 3.

    On that last- I have had to use scissors to open the plastic packaging of a new pair of scissors. True story. Within the last month.

    Now, I managed it without injuring myself, which probably puts me in the top 20%, but what gives?

  17. Graham says:

    OTOH, if I hacked at the scissors packet with a kitchen knife I’d deserve the subsequent memo from the Ironic Punishments Department.

  18. Kirk says:

    Graham, Paul…

    Yesterday, I was in a foul mood for reasons I won’t go into, but which had something to do with the technically inept.

    I frankly have to wonder what the hell is going to happen, going forward. Once you start to look at getting people off the planet and into artificial environments “out there”, I fear that the vast majority of the race is simply not going to be viable, because the level of idiot-proofing necessary to keep those idiots alive is going to be exponentially harder to accomplish. You think it’s bad, now? Wait until you have to worry about someone bypassing the safety systems the way they do here on earth, in order to make life “more convenient”. I know people who’ve done things that flat-out boggle the mind, when it comes to ill-conceived workarounds. Casual acquaintance of mine got tired of the buzzer in their car going off for the seatbelt, so they cut the buckle out of the belt and stuck that into the locking bit, and drove without seatbelts. Wouldn’t have been so bad, but they did that to all the seatbelts in the car, not just the ones that were hooked into the buzzer. I go to get in the car with them one day, and he’s pointing out his very brilliant work-around with great pride. I’m like “Yeah, no… I’ve seen you drive; I’ll walk.”.

    People like that are who you have to worry about with these things. And, most of the race ain’t going to make the cut, from what I’ve observed. Being able to search an email account is only the very tippy-tip of the iceberg, when it comes to technical competence, and most people don’t even know you can do that, despite nearly thirty years of exposure to computers. How the hell these people get through the day, I’ll never understand. You’d think most of them would die of starvation, trapped behind the closed doors of their bathrooms, or something. I swear to God, some of the people I run into can’t be much smarter than the Sims characters I watch the kids playing with.

    Or, maybe that’s the real deal: The technically competent are the only real characters in this video game we’re stuck in, and the rest are just non-player characters with really bad game AI…

  19. Graham says:

    That’s the first argument for the idea that we live in a simulation that I might actually be prepared to buy.

    I admire the hack that driver friend used, but only if he had done it only to his own seat. He should not be trying to kill his passengers. But really I’m young enough that belts have been a feature for most of my life, so he would be better to just wear the thing. Better than a catastrophic autodefenestration.

  20. Paul from Canada says:

    I’ve said this before in another thread, but it bears repeating.

    I fear that we are going to become like the post Roman Britons, aware of aqueducts, domes, roads, concrete, centrally heated bathhouses and the like, but unable to maintain or build them….

    Kirk,

    Speaking of technical ineptitude, some years ago, the company I work for had a contract to fly for a large courier company, taking overnight packages between major cities.

    We used B727 aircraft, all of which had been converted from passenger aircraft into freighters. Because they were aftermarket conversions, the weight and balance calculations were difficult. The passenger planes used a paper graph in conjunction with a plastic plotter and some tables, and the crew did it themselves. The cargo conversion required some quite complex math to blend various datum points together, so an excel spreadsheet was developed to do the math. Being the days before cheap laptops and tablets, the crew could no longer do it themselves on the flight deck.

    Now usually in such a situation, the loading crew supervisor or ground handling agent would be taught how to do it. In fact it works best that way, since they build the load and do the work, it is in their interest to plan the balance carefully. For some reason, my boss insisted that us dispatchers did the weight and balance calculation. This made no sense to me, and I assumed that it was just my boss being a control freak (which he was!).

    Then something happened which made me understand his point of view.

    So:

    1. Loadsheet arrives by fax

    2. Paul inputs said loadsheet into the program, and the result is out of balance, too tail heavy.

    3. Paul calls the load team supervisor; “Sorry, this plan is too tail heavy, you need to re-arrange the containers to move more weight forward.”

    4. Paul gets (T.I.N.S!), the following response: “We have already finished loading and closed the doors, can’t they just fix it at the next stop?” (!)

    That is when I understood why my boss would not delegate the calculation to the ground crew!

  21. Kirk says:

    Paul, if you ever want to see something nasty along those lines, look up that 747 they crashed at Bagram.

    https://youtu.be/lksDISvCmNI

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Airlines_Flight_102

    I’m here to tell you, aircraft load planning is no damn joke. Did that class, got certified on it, and throughout the entire thing, all I could think was “What a massive nightmare this could be, if you did it wrong…”. It’s not as easy as it looks, from the outside.

  22. Paul from Canada says:

    Kirk,

    Yep!

    I’ve shown the video of that crash as part of our annual re-current training course (which I do as my secondary role as check and training dispatcher).

    In that case, it was the loadmaster not understanding the physics of the tie-down system. He thought that the chains and tire-downs he used were sufficient, but failed to take into account the angle of pull, so the load rating perpendicular to the load was sufficient, but angle of pull reduced the actual load rating.

    As for your last paragraph, also “yep!” I HATED having to do weight and balance. One of my objections was that by having us dispatchers doing it, we were adding another person/step into the process, magnifying the opportunity for transcription and other errors. I sweated more over weight and balance than the actual flight, fuel, weather and route planing that was my primary job!

    In retrospect, I don’t want to knock the ground crew as much as I think I did in this anecdote, since I also had a ground agent call me and request I delay a flight (despite huge pressure on him from HIS bosses not to), since there was some confusion about paperwork and he insisted on pulling a container off and having it re-weighed, since some numbers didn’t match the paperwork.

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