Math instincts
This article from the New York Times is somewhat old, but it’s still interesting. Research about how humans (and other animals) understand numbers, in a kind of primitive mathematics, can give us insight on how to teach math to young children.
One research team has found that how readily people rally their approximate number sense is linked over time to success in even the most advanced and abstruse mathematics courses. Other scientists have shown that preschool children are remarkably good at approximating the impact of adding to or subtracting from large groups of items but are poor at translating the approximate into the specific. Taken together, the new research suggests that math teachers might do well to emphasize the power of the ballpark figure, to focus less on arithmetic precision and more on general reckoning.
Try this Flash game to evaluate your own number sense.
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