49 lines
3.5 KiB
Markdown
49 lines
3.5 KiB
Markdown
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# Preface
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"What is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures...."
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--Lewis Carroll
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In the fall of 1982 I started to teach a course called "Problems in Visual Thinking."
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It was offered jointly by Parsons School of Design in Paris and the American College in Paris.
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Looking back now, perhaps I should have replaced the word _Problems_ with something less pathological--_Explorations_ maybe.
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But that original title really indicated my reason for inventing the course in the first place.
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I taught courses in statistics and operations research in which I encouraged my students to add a bit of visual thinking to their quantitative analysis, but each semester I was disappointed.
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I continued my pleas for visualization because I saw that the few students who could introduce a little of it into their work discovered--more often than not--the most surprisingly useful things.
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These visualizers seemed to me less intimidated by vagueness because their picture -making abilities gave them concrete starting points, and they seemed to enjoy playing around with the
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painted pieces of complex problems.
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Perhaps, I thought, their visual play encouraged them to see where more analytic approaches might usefully be applied.
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My problem was to discover how to teach visual thinking to those students who had problems doing it naturally.
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It was obvious that most of my students lacked visual vocabulary and few of them had ever been in an art or drawing studio.
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How was I to cancel out this liability ? Luckily I had managed an art
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school and knew a bit about people who had design experience.
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Professional art students certainly have the visual baggage, but most are severely lacking in analytical skills.
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"Let's put these two groups together," I thought, "and set them a series of tasks."
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The art students can show their colleagues a bit about color and design, while the non-art crew can gently introduce the art students to a little quantitative model building.
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The Logo computer language struck me as an appropriate medium of instruction--just enough of the visual and just enough of the analytical.
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Problems in Visual Thinking was born.
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There were no suitable texts, so I set out to write one, and this book is the most recent set of class notes.
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It is structured around a series of exercises that encourage visual thinking in students from a variety of different backgrounds.
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I wish that I could claim total success in turning my students into better
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problem-solvers by first turning them into more effective visualizers.
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But I fear that my record is mixed.
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I am convinced, however, that for some people, certainly not all, visual model building is an enormously enjoyable activity that leads them in new and surprising directions.
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And since that activity falls nicely within the terms of reference of a liberal arts education, I am quite pleased with the classroom results I have seen.
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Most thanks are due to my students because this book was realized with
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their help.
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You will find quotes and illustrations from them scattered throughout the text.
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Thanks, too, go to Roger Shepherd, the first Director of Parsons in Paris, who not only encouraged me to start this project but helped to teach it for the first year.
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Were it not for Frank Satlow of MIT Press, this book would still be in a basement Xerox room.
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I also benefited from his readers' reports.
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The final construction of the manuscript, however, was a solo affair; what,ever opacities, inconsistencies, or mistakes remain are mine.
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James Clayson
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Paris, 1987
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