Yes people want to mentally rotate, but that's not correct. This is not a "geometric" coordinate system independent operation.
IMO this is a basic risk to graphs. It is great to use imagery to engage the spatial reasoning parts of our brain. But sometimes, it is deceiving — like this case —because we impute geometric structure which isn't true about the mathematical construct being visualized.
IMO this is a basic risk to graphs. It is great to use imagery to engage the spatial reasoning parts of our brain. But sometimes, it is deceiving — like this case —because we impute geometric structure which isn't true about the mathematical construct being visualized.