07-08-2012, 12:10 PM
(07-08-2012, 05:38 AM)BellaStrega Wrote: Unit conversion's been really easy for me for a long time. I got into roleplaying games in middle school, and I ended up writing a lot of Champions characters without the aid of a calculator. At some point I started doing arithmetic mentally, which included unit conversions.
I'm convinced that the reason why fractions were so intuitive to me compared to most of my classmates when the subject came up in math classes was the fact that I had a much bigger musical background from playing the piano, singing in choirs since I was 6, and later band. Whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, eighth notes, sixteenth notes, triplets, 4/4 time, 3/4 time, 2/4 time, cut (1/2) time, 6/8 time, 6/4 time, 2/3 time... music uses fractions all over the place. Plus, you get not just an intellectual feel but also a visceral feel of the fractions from the music.