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What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)

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Re: What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)

#91

Post by [deleted] »

WalterBright wrote: post #89
jdietrich wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely untrained people can trace a drawing with a good degree of accuracy, yet fail completely to draw even simple forms with any degree of verisimilitude. Teachers like Betty Edwards and Bert Dodson have proven that pretty much anyone can learn to draw to a high standard in a remarkably short space of time once they understand the visual principles of effective drawing. Mastering draftsmanship requires a lifeti…

> Mastering draftsmanship requires a lifetime of practice Draftsmanship is quickly learned by young people. I sat next to a 20 year old at Boeing who was very competent at making engineering drawings (and Boeing had high standards - they didn't want any ambiguity for obvious reasons). Though perhaps you mean something else by draftsmanship.

[deleted]

Re: What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)

#92

Post by dancek »

stefan_ wrote: post #61
ianbicking wrote: post #26

I'm looking at the third one down and wondering: why aren't all-wheel-drive bikes a thing? (Well, steering...) I guess there is such a thing: http://christinibicycles.com/ – sounds pretty complicated: 'A handlebar-mounted switch controls the AWD “shift on the fly” clutch. When the clutch is engaged, the rear spiral gear interlocks with the rear hub and power is transferred via internal shafts to the forward spiral ge…

Crucially a front wheel losing traction isn't recoverable. So it has rained, you ride over a bunch of leaves and that is the moment the electric motor decides to apply power, you're going down immediately. And why in the first place, there is no benefit.

Well, that depends. It's easy to lock your front wheel for a split-second on gravel without falling---you just need to keep your balance while the wheel is locked. If there's a certain amount of kinetic friction front wheel drive could even make it possible to recover after balance is lost.

AWD (electric front drive + pedaling) is actually quite common among hobbyists in areas that often have snow (say, Scandinavia). It's as useful as it is for cars.

Re: What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)

#93

Post by nadavr »

ranit wrote: post #88
jdietrich wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clench your fist. Take a moment to notice the complexity of the geometry. Consider how you might reduce that shape to simple geometric forms. Consider how you might represent the three-dimensional form as a set of two-dimensional lines. Turn your hand around and look at it from a different angle. Open your fist and make an "OK" or a "peace" sign. Go to your refrigerator and take out a lettuce leaf or a piece of brocc…

> Look out of your window at a tree ... > Even the drawings in the linked article with their horribly mangled geometry are immediately recognisable as a bicycle. It's not a difficult thing to draw, relatively speaking. I guess, the point is that a bike is easier to draw that natural objects. I bet if people had been asked to draw a tree, 100% of the pictures would be recognisable as proper tree. Conversion from reali…

Ah, this is where it gets interesting.

I suspect the author of the (wonderful) book linked above would suggest that 100% of the pictures would be recognizable as a _picture of a tree_ -- a form which we all learn by age 5 but which does not actually correspond to a physical tree much, if at all.

Re: What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)

#94

Post by samstave »

dirtyaura wrote: post #69
atourgates wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As odd at is - this[1] design has a couple elements that have been reproduced in the real world. While the exact 2wd system shown in the rendering would have some real issues, 2wd mountain bike systems do exist. They can rely on impressively strange chain routing[2], a system of gears and internal shafts[3], or just an electric hub[4] (which is admittedly, not really the same thing). As far as the one-sided frame goe…

I didn’t know about 2WD bikes existed! I’d love to try out to experience how it feels to drive 2WD. The Lefty design also looks very interesting, do you have practical experience with it? What an amazing comment full of new eye-opening information for me, thanks

I rode the lefty for years. Its a great bike. Though, you can actually feel the fact that its slightly less structurally sound than a traditional fork.

But I loved it.

Re: What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)

#96

Post by baddox »

> Little I knew this is actually a test that psychologists use to demonstrate how our brain sometimes tricks us into thinking we know something even though we don’t.

This seems like a leap, or at least an oversimplification of what the author is referring to in psychology. I’m convinced that my attempt to draw a bicycle would be quite terrible, but I’m also convinced that I would be able to look at my drawing and judge it as terrible.

Re: What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)

#97

Post by comboy »

baddox wrote: post #96

> Little I knew this is actually a test that psychologists use to demonstrate how our brain sometimes tricks us into thinking we know something even though we don’t. This seems like a leap, or at least an oversimplification of what the author is referring to in psychology. I’m convinced that my attempt to draw a bicycle would be quite terrible, but I’m also convinced that I would be able to look at my drawing and jud…

Most people don't do this check though.

Re: What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)

#98

Post by baddox »

Buldak wrote: post #22
jschwartzi wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask people to draw the powertrain or running gear of a car and you'd get much the same result.

Is that a good comparison? How often does the average person actually see either of those things? The reason it's surprising that people struggle to draw bikes from memory is that most of us see them all the time.

How about drawing faces of famous people then? Presumably those results would be even worse. With these bicycle drawings, even the most inaccurate ones are pretty easy to recognize as bicycles. But I don’t think you’d get very many recognizable pictures of famous faces, except for a few subjects with famously recognizable features (like hairdo or facial hair).

Re: What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)

#100

Post by notatoad »

akhleung wrote: post #5

Heh, when I was a kid I used to draw a lot, and I remember being bothered that I didn't know how to draw a bike, so back then I explicitly memorized the shapes (parallelogram in the back, and another line for the front wheels). Wonder if that's common for doodlers.

A parallelogram is missing the seat tube, which is a fairly important part of the bike.
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