Free association

[bandit957]

Did anybody else ever freely associate? By that, I mean that you would think of something, and then think of something else completely unrelated to it.

When I was growing up, I had a toy with little Lego-like tiles to make pictures. A character on the sitcom 'Fish' chewed bubble gum. To represent it, I made a picture with this toy of something completely different.

[Takumi]

what

[Max Rockatansky]

When I think of vomit for some reason I always think of the color orange. 

[adventurernumber1]

I don't know if this falls within this concept, but as long as I can remember, I have always subconsciously color-coded numbers. 1 is red, 2 is yellow, 3 is orange, 4 is green, 5 is blue, 6 is dark blue, 7 is green, 8 is red, and both 9 and 0 are dark blue. Completely nonsensical but it has always been ingrained in my psyche.     

[bandit957]

I don't know if this falls within this concept, but as long as I can remember, I have always subconsciously color-coded numbers. 1 is red, 2 is yellow, 3 is orange, 4 is green, 5 is blue, 6 is dark blue, 7 is green, 8 is red, and both 9 and 0 are dark blue. Completely nonsensical but it has always been ingrained in my psyche.     

When I was growing up, there was a system that was used all the time that assigned a color to numbers 1 thru 8. I think they were the same colors that Crayola used in a box of 8 crayons. I think it went like this:

1 - red
2 - blue
3 - green
4 - yellow
5 - orange
6 - purple
7 - brown
8 - black

We were supposed to learn colors in that order. That was the order in every classroom. If you already knew all the colors, you could always predict what color was next (since they taught us the same things over and over well into elementary school).

[hotdogPi]

This game (a variant of 2048 where pretty much any number can appear, and numbers merge with their divisors) will make you rethink what color gets what number (and it's not digit by digit). If you spend a lot of time with resistors, you'll also have certain digit = color correlations.

[JoePCool14]

When I took Speech class last semester, our professor told us to try free association for coming up with topics for our speeches. For example, here was my brainstorming for our informative speech, and you can see how off-the-wall these can get.

Snow > Skiing > Driving > Traffic > Signs > Cars

Computers > Windows 10 > Web Browsers > Ad Blocking > Morality > God

Nintendo Switch > Console Wars > Genesis versus SNES > 1990s > Bill Clinton > Presidential Impeachments

Formula 1 > Racing in the Wet > Canada 2011 > Crashes > HANS device > HALO design > USA 2005

Online Classes > In-Person Classes > Social Interaction

Engineering > Fluids > Water Quality > Water-efficient design > EPA regulations > government overreach

Donald Trump > 2016 election > 2020 election > summary of his term in office > Left vs. Right

Cities Skylines > Best Cities Skylines Mods > Efficient design of cities > History of Sim City games

[Scott5114]

I don't know if this falls within this concept, but as long as I can remember, I have always subconsciously color-coded numbers. 1 is red, 2 is yellow, 3 is orange, 4 is green, 5 is blue, 6 is dark blue, 7 is green, 8 is red, and both 9 and 0 are dark blue. Completely nonsensical but it has always been ingrained in my psyche.     

This is a very mild form of synesthesia, for what it's worth. Some people's synesthesia is strong enough they actually hallucinate numbers or letters as being in their colors of choice whenever they see them. (This is less bad than it sounds–being able to see numbers or letters in color means makes it very easy for a synesthete to spot errors in spelling or transposed digits.) Some people also assign "personalities" to characters as well, which is something I have a mild form of.

Since I worked in horse racing for a year, I tend to use the saddle cloth colors whenever I need to label things with numbers and colors. So 1 is red, 2 is white, 3 is blue, 4 is yellow, 5 is green...and so on up to 21 (lavender).

[kphoger]

Composers also wrote pieces of music in certain keys because each key had its own mood/feeling.

[Big John]

I don't know if this falls within this concept, but as long as I can remember, I have always subconsciously color-coded numbers. 1 is red, 2 is yellow, 3 is orange, 4 is green, 5 is blue, 6 is dark blue, 7 is green, 8 is red, and both 9 and 0 are dark blue. Completely nonsensical but it has always been ingrained in my psyche.     

Then later on, they teach you Roy G. Biv.

When I was growing up, there was a system that was used all the time that assigned a color to numbers 1 thru 8. I think they were the same colors that Crayola used in a box of 8 crayons. I think it went like this:

1 - red
2 - blue
3 - green
4 - yellow
5 - orange
6 - purple
7 - brown
8 - black

We were supposed to learn colors in that order. That was the order in every classroom. If you already knew all the colors, you could always predict what color was next (since they taught us the same things over and over well into elementary school).

[bandit957]

Shouldn't Roy G. Biv really be Roy G. Bip? I always thought violet was really a form of purple (though Wikipedia shows they're slightly different).

[hotdogPi]

Shouldn't Roy G. Biv really be Roy G. Bip? I always thought violet was really a form of purple (though Wikipedia shows they're slightly different).

Violet is a wavelength, which an actual rainbow has. Purple is between red and blue. It exists on the color wheel, but not in the rainbow.

On the other hand, the original idea of having seven colors instead of six was to split blue into two, not have something between blue and violet.

[Big John]

Shouldn't Roy G. Biv really be Roy G. Bip? I always thought violet was really a form of purple (though Wikipedia shows they're slightly different).

So you want the rainbow to bip?

[kphoger]

Shouldn't Roy G. Biv really be Roy G. Bip? I always thought violet was really a form of purple (though Wikipedia shows they're slightly different).

So you want the rainbow to bip?

[Pink Jazz]

I associate music genres with colors:

   
• Rock - Red
• Pop - Yellow
• Smooth Jazz - Pink
• R&B - Blue
• Country - Brown
• Classical - Purple
• New Age - White
• Disco - Silver
• Electronica - Gray
• Hip Hop - Dark Blue

Also, I can do a few months of the year, but not all of them:

• January - Blue (cold/winter)
• February - Pink (Valentine's Day)
• March - Green (St. Patrick's Day)
• April - Yellow (Easter)
• May - Emerald Green (Spring)
• July - Red, White, and Blue (Fourth of July)
• October - Orange (Halloween)
• November - Brown (Thanksgiving)
• December - Red (Christmas)

[hotdogPi]

If you lived in an area with trees, fall would get fall leaf colors.

[wxfree]

I don't know if this falls within this concept, but as long as I can remember, I have always subconsciously color-coded numbers. 1 is red, 2 is yellow, 3 is orange, 4 is green, 5 is blue, 6 is dark blue, 7 is green, 8 is red, and both 9 and 0 are dark blue. Completely nonsensical but it has always been ingrained in my psyche.     

13 is brown.  I don't know why, but I've always seen it that way.  Either 11 or 12 is gray, maybe both.

[Scott5114]

I associate music genres with colors:

   
• Smooth Jazz - Pink

How about other, harder varieties of jazz? Bebop? Swing? Fusion? Bossa nova? Are those all pink as well, or other colors?

Also, I can do a few months of the year, but not all of them:

I find myself associating the months with the colors they appeared as on a 1995 calendar that came out of a Wendy's kids meal (I was 5 at the time and I think that was the first calendar I had of my own), though I don't remember all of them:

• January - Light blue
• February - Pink
• March - Green
• April - Light blue
• May - Yellow
• June - Dark blue
• July - Lime green
• September - Pink
• October - Orange
• November - Yellow

[bandit957]

For a while, I think I associated each state with a color, based on a plastic United States puzzle I had when I was very, very young. I'm pretty sure Connecticut was aqua but I don't remember any of the other states. Ohio and Tennessee might have been dark blue, and Michigan might have been red.

Each state had a small hole where the state capital was, and there were little capital pieces you could place there. Each state also had the year it became a state.

This was way back in the 1970s.

[Pink Jazz]

How about other, harder varieties of jazz? Bebop? Swing? Fusion? Bossa nova? Are those all pink as well, or other colors?

Smooth jazz would be more of a Fairy Tale pink, while other varieties would be brighter pink shades.

[Roadgeekteen]

I don't get it

[bandit957]

Something very similar to this is how I've come up with certain sounds and gestures that accompany certain words. These theatrics are designed to emphasize the point of the word.

The word "wasted" is accompanied by a gesture that mimics spilling a drinking cup.

The word "ruin" is accompanied by mimicking breaking something in half or splitting a blade of grass down the middle.

The word "inflation" (like how the cost of things keeps going up) is preceded by mimicking a balloon inflating.

The word "artillery" is accompanied by a high-pitched tune.

Any time a pie graph is mentioned, it's preceded by "splat!", like how people get pies thrown in their faces.

When I was about 9, I even created several fictional characters who specialized in certain interests, and had their own sounds and gestures when they mentioned them. There was one who would move his hand in the same way as the Bangles later did in their "Walk Like An Egyptian" video.

[Hobart]

I associated certain colors with certain courses all throughout my grade school career, because the folders for those classes happened to be that color. Apparently this is something a lot of people my age debate about.

• Math is red
• Science is green
• Reading is blue
• Spelling is yellow
• Social Studies is purple
• Orange is an extra color for any electives

These gradually warped over time to fit my courses covering almost exclusively engineering.

[Max Rockatansky]

14 and 155 for some reason make me think of yellow.  I might be associating the typical color I see while driving the respective state highways in California.

[Scott5114]

I associated certain colors with certain courses all throughout my grade school career, because the folders for those classes happened to be that color. Apparently this is something a lot of people my age debate about.

• Math is red
• Science is green
• Reading is blue
• Spelling is yellow
• Social Studies is purple
• Orange is an extra color for any electives

These gradually warped over time to fit my courses covering almost exclusively engineering.

This mostly matches with mine, but I had math as blue and yellow covered pretty much all of English.