Organic multiplication table
Mangrovia is the place where Roberto Casati and Goffredo Puccetti talk about design. This conversation has started in December 2013. We are interested in the intellectual intricacy of design. We keep our eyes open on good and bad design – equally important for us. Equally important are theory (mostly from cognitive science) and practice (mostly form communication and process design).
Mangrovia è dal dicembre 2013 la bacheca appunti di Roberto Casati e Goffredo Puccetti sul design. Il design ci interessa per la sua complessità intellettuale. Cerchiamo intorno a noi esempi di buono e cattivo design e ne parliamo prendendo spunto dalla teoria (soprattutto dalle scienze cognitive) e dalla pratica (soprattutto dalla comunicazione e dai processi di progettazione).
Maths teaching in the secondary school uses cartesian representations, i.e. diagrams centered on an origin, with the upper right quadrant occupied by positive numbers. The multiplication table taught in primary school is not well aligned with this later practice. It is, in its own, a cartesian representation, but the origin for positive numbers is in the top left corner instead of being in the bottom left corner.
Let us thus introduce the Organic Multiplication Table, that has the same spatial orientation as the top right quadrant of the standard Cartesian representation.
| 5 | |||||
| 4 | |||||
| 3 | |||||
| 2 | |||||
| 1 | |||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
As adults, we have interiorized a number of (conventional) interpretations of the graphic features of Cartesian space. For instance, growth or increase is a movement towards the upper right corner of the space; decrease is a movement towards the bottom right corner. We also see that certain areas are equivalent to or larger than other areas. Under certain interpretations we literally see accelerations and linear changes. Finally, most graphs used for displaying statistics have the « growth » orientation built in.
Some of these later cognitive abilities can be foreshadowed by training on a representational space that is the same as will be used later on in life.
You can download a pdf version of Mangrovia Design Collective’s Organic Multiplication Table: use it in schools and with your children!
