I feel like I’m going insane reading these comments about how difficult it is to read analog clocks, how it needs too much understanding of maths, how it takes too long,…
Can someone please confirm: you just look, for a fraction of a second, at the clock face and know the time, right?
Learning to read the clock was like… A couple of lessons and some homework in the 2nd grade, and everyone got it.
I don’t know, I’ve never particularly liked analogue clocks. I don’t think I ever thought of them as difficult to read, but it’s far superior to look at an exact number like digital usually features.
Disagree - it rarely matters to me if it’s 13:24:56 or 13:25:05, but I do find the instant and intuitive gauging of time deltas super useful (as in, how long it’s going to be to the full hour / to quarter past / … ). Not saying you can’t get that info from a digital clock as well, of course you can; but the physicality of analog clocks lends a good bit of intuition to this, I feel.
I get that, but I personally find that I often do care about the exact time, down to the minutes, and that’s harder to track with an analogue clock. I don’t have particular problems in reading them, I just often prefer digital clocks.
But I will agree that I feel analogue clocks give a better vibe of the time, since its basically a pie chart of how far you are in the day.
To be fair if you are never exposed to it (and judging by the comments that seems to have happened in the US) you can’t tell the time by “just looking at it”. But analog clocks are objectively simpler to teach to children (let’s say three to eight years old).
They are actually a helpful way to show passage of time visually, without abstract math knowledge. For example my son has downsydrome, he could read time from analog and understand passage of time and time left on it, but numbers counting up to 60 was abstract… Like its 47 minutes past 5 how close to the hour is it getting? No clue unless he wrote it out as a math question and did the subtraction. But for him those were meaningless numbers anyway. 15 was no different than 45 for him. But visual cues of quarter past and quarter to made sense for him
I feel like I’m going insane reading these comments about how difficult it is to read analog clocks, how it needs too much understanding of maths, how it takes too long,…
Can someone please confirm: you just look, for a fraction of a second, at the clock face and know the time, right?
Learning to read the clock was like… A couple of lessons and some homework in the 2nd grade, and everyone got it.
Some of these comments are made by lazy idiots arguing that there is nothing wrong with being lazy idiot.
I don’t understand how you could possibly classify looking at a clock as lazy.
Read again.
I just don’t see what any of this has to do with laziness.
I can confirm. You are not insane.
I don’t know, I’ve never particularly liked analogue clocks. I don’t think I ever thought of them as difficult to read, but it’s far superior to look at an exact number like digital usually features.
Disagree - it rarely matters to me if it’s 13:24:56 or 13:25:05, but I do find the instant and intuitive gauging of time deltas super useful (as in, how long it’s going to be to the full hour / to quarter past / … ). Not saying you can’t get that info from a digital clock as well, of course you can; but the physicality of analog clocks lends a good bit of intuition to this, I feel.
I get that, but I personally find that I often do care about the exact time, down to the minutes, and that’s harder to track with an analogue clock. I don’t have particular problems in reading them, I just often prefer digital clocks.
But I will agree that I feel analogue clocks give a better vibe of the time, since its basically a pie chart of how far you are in the day.
That does make sense.
To be fair if you are never exposed to it (and judging by the comments that seems to have happened in the US) you can’t tell the time by “just looking at it”. But analog clocks are objectively simpler to teach to children (let’s say three to eight years old).
I’m 35. Math major. Work in STEAM. Well educated.
I hate analogue clocks. Why use subpar way of reading time if digital is so much better?
They are actually a helpful way to show passage of time visually, without abstract math knowledge. For example my son has downsydrome, he could read time from analog and understand passage of time and time left on it, but numbers counting up to 60 was abstract… Like its 47 minutes past 5 how close to the hour is it getting? No clue unless he wrote it out as a math question and did the subtraction. But for him those were meaningless numbers anyway. 15 was no different than 45 for him. But visual cues of quarter past and quarter to made sense for him