The graph and the digital clock

How do you tell time?

Our tutor was recently reviewing a practice test with one of his students.  These are intended to prepare for the actual standardized tests, having similar content and being of similar difficulty.  This student found it very hard to read a graph.  Given a plot showing, say, temperature versus depth in the ocean, he simply couldn’t come up with the right temperature for the water 500 meters down.  He didn’t go into any detail of what he found difficult in the problem (few students, indeed few people, are much good at self-analysis), but whether simple plots or moderately complicated, he couldn’t extract the required information.  (Of course, that’s where our tutor came in.)

We have been reading, using and sometimes creating graphs since almost before we can remember, sometimes at a very sophisticated level, so we have difficulty putting ourselves in the student’s place.  Still, we think that pulling a number off a graph should not have been hard.  Go down to the 500 meter line, slide over to the curve, read off 5 degrees C, and there it is.  But it occurs to us that reading a graph is an analog skill, like reading the pointer on a gauge, or the hands of a clock.  In this digital age, has the skill atrophied?

We’re not going to assert it as certain, not yet.  In the days before digital there were of course many who had trouble reading a graph, as there were those who could not read a map or balance a checkbook (though the latter is not so much an analog as a manual skill).  But our tutor thinks that students today do find it harder to interpret analog information.  It’s beyond doubt that many miss the several questions in our question bank concerning the motion of the hands of a clock, because in normal life they are overwhelmingly exposed to digital displays.

We were inclined to argue with him.  Graphs and charts are ubiquitous.  Every smartphone can display the price of any stock over whatever period as a graph (we don’t use this feature on ours).  In fact, they’re much easier to produce now than in the analog days, so there are more of them.  And consider the digital imitations of analog displays!  We routinely use the stopwatch feature of a smartphone in cooking, which shows a sweep second hand exactly like a mechanical watch, to say nothing of the imitation barometer needle and dial.

But then we had our doubts.  All of the imitation-analog features of our smartphones are alternative choices.  And most any graph you can find in digital form will give you a (digital) number if you hover over a particular place.  Is it true that today’s students find it hard to read a dial?

Well, maybe it’s not important.  If you can get your information by recording a number rather than judging the position of a needle, maybe you’re more accurate.  Certainly it’s easier.  And it’s the way the world seems to have gone.