Comment by gcanyon

6 hours ago

One aspect of this is that apparently most people can't draw a bicycle much better than this: they get the elements of the frame wrong, mess up the geometry, etc.

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gcanyon

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arionmiles  5 hours ago

There's a research paper from the University of Liverpool, published in 2006 where researchers asked people to draw bicycles from memory and how people overestimate their understanding of basic things. It was a very fun and short read.

It's called "The science of cycology: Failures to understand how everyday objects work" by Rebecca Lawson.

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.3758/bf03195929.pdf

  • rcxdude  4 hours ago

    A place I worked at used it as part of an interview question (it wasn't some pass/fail thing to get it 100% correct, and was partly a jumping off point to a different question). This was in a city where nearly everyone uses bicycles as everyday transportation. It was surprising how many supposedly mechanical-focused people who rode a bike everyday, even rode a bike to the interview, would draw a bike that would not work.

    • gcanyon  3 hours ago

      I wish I had interviewed there. When I first read that people have a hard time with this I immediately sat down without looking at a reference and drew a bicycle. I could ace your interview.

    • throwuxiytayq  4 hours ago

      This is why at my company in interviews we ask people to draw a CPU diagram. You'd be surprised how many supposedly-senior computer programmers would draw a processor that would not work.

      5 replies →

gnatolf  6 hours ago

Absolutely. A technically correct bike is very hard to draw in SVG without going overboard in details