im a visual learner.

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Yes, scientific writing can be difficult to digest sometimes, especially while under a deadline. It can be very dry to read, even by scientists. Some particular articles have been known to make me fall asleep late at night. Exposure to them is the key to understanding them. My research advisors kept pushing our group members to be constantly reading the scientific literature or be lambasted in public for not doing so. Every week we would have a group meeting where one person would present their research findings for the month and someone else had to critically critique a full journal article (usually 5 to 30 pages, not a short 1 page communication). By having us do that, it trained us in being able to decipher the valuable information in the article rather quickly. It was a giant PITA to do though. However, it allowed me to pull together a mental picture of the article within a short period of time based upon what I have read in similar articles in the scientific literature.

My favorite cume exam topic was to be able to know two full articles picked from random out of two well respected journals in my field over a six month print period. You had to know the full article title, authors, institutions and a full description of the contents, including diagrams. The exam is limited to how much you can physically write in two hours. Each time that type of cume exam was offered, I was the only one to pass out of a group of ten graduate students. They called me a super for being able to do that.

This gets to the point of why I had a hard time learning in school. Although bullying is still my number one reason why I failed in school. The second reason was that I was a visual learner in an auditory environment. It's like there sending you files to download in to your brain and expecting you to remember the data in the file and store it, phrase the data in the file. And then create the visual models from decoding the data in the file. All while trying to retain this data in you brain's memory and dealing with the constant bombardment of everything going on in the classroom.

Yeah, well, I'm impressed. I think I would wear my pocket protector proudly.

Well, yes and no. Unfortunately, one of the graduate students that failed those cumes was a favorite of my research advisor. He took it out on me, as he felt that there was no way that I should have passed the exam when his star failed it. I got pulled into his office and lambasted for an hour over the cume exam. This was probably the starting point of the problems that I had with a particular research advisor, as he wanted to personally "weed out" the prospects a bit (including me). He told me to never take his cume exams because he would never pass me on them regardless on what I wrote on the exam. Having him say that to my face was not a good thing. All I wanted to do was to pass the cumes and move on to the next stage in the game so that I could earn my PhD.

Bad professors are everywhere. The ones that rule by fear are the worst. I don't get it. I've caught people cheating, but I could prove it. I never accused. I always ask if they can explain it to my satisfaction.

I am glad you pulled through that though. Kudos to you!!

No, I'm not, I understand concepts the easiest and preferably delivered in writing, in a dry and factual manner. I'm completely incapable and unwilling to watch a 20-30 min youtube video full of fluff and unnecessary and exaggerated gestures meant to create a "bond" with the audience for 10 min of content that I could easily read in 2 min. Myself liking the person or not has absolutely nothing to do with agreeing with their ideas (or not), and it's the kind of "trick" that is more prone to attract my contempt and distrust. If your ideas have any value they don't need a sparkly packaging and the whole thing makes you look like a crook (ok, this turned into a rant )

Here I avoid like the pest threads where people post a string of videos and images without bothering to even explain their position.

I try to find the YouTube videos that follow this format:
1.) demonstrate what they will be going over
2.) will do it in a manner that is moduled and explained not only what they are doing, but why it is working. If I can't get the why, I can;t build concepts or really grok it.
3.) show what mistakes to look out for
4. Will go in depth on every part, even if it is review....Repetition is key when learning new concepts.

It is a very effective teaching method. The ones that do the arm waving and all as you describe really tick me off. If I want to be entertained, I'll watch a documentary.

But, many, many of them are bad. The noise to signal ratio is getting larger and larger, crowding out the good information.

Worse, sometimes you can go down wrong roads if they are teaching outdated methods or worse, wrong version of things. I had to learn Flash twice because I was studying 2.0 when I should have been studying 3.0. Rally lost time on that.

Just not coherent.

^
I get it, it just works very differently for me. Give me the most arid and technical manual and I'm happy Even when it comes to instructions on how to fix/assemble something etc, and I prefer them in writing... seems to be the best way for me to understand something.

I do enjoy watching films, videos, pictures etc for entertainment or aesthetic reasons though.

http://www.phschool.com/eteach/social_s ... essay.html
This essay claims that 65% of the population consists of visual learners.

Well, if 65% of the population are visual learners. Then why doesn't the school system use a visual system of learning in the first place. After all. 65% is greater then 50%, and that said. The school system should've naturally gravitated towards that system of learning in the first place.

Because our educational system is fubar'd beyond belief with everybody using their pet theories every year to yank a nation's chain.

There is so much wrong with our system, from trying to make everybody feel good just for doing nothing and then trying to shoehorn everybody into a calculation of metrics that really have no bearing on things.

I am a visual learner but I'll sometimes also need auditory aid to fully understand what I'm looking at.