One Dot, Two Dot, Yellow Dot, Blue Dot.
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Sep 15, 2008 Posted by Ned Johnson
A new report in the journal Nature shows why some people are just better at math than others. Some people do seemingly "just get it." As reported in this week's Washington Post, adult humans, infants, and non-human animals all share an ability to approximate numbers. In the study, participants were asked to say whether a quick computer screen-shot of blue and yellow dots had a higher percentage of blue or yellow. When the disparity between the numbers was high, nearly everyone did well. But, as the differences became smaller, some students clearly had much stronger powers of discrimination. This is a skill we use, for example, to quickly size up in which line to stand at a checkout, which group is larger or whether a stack of plates is adequate for our guests at a barbecue. Animals use it to assess foraging and nesting sites and evaluate threats, among other things.
What's interesting to us and relevant to you is the fact that the ability to estimate is highly correlated in humans to performance in mathematics - from the basics to calculus. According to the authors of the study “there are large individual differences in the non-verbal approximation abilities of 14-year-old children, and that these individual differences in the present correlate with children's past scores on standardized maths(sic) achievement tests, extending all the way back to kindergarten. Moreover, this correlation remains significant when controlling for individual differences in other cognitive and performance factors. Our results show that individual differences in achievement in school mathematics are related to individual differences in the acuity of an evolutionarily ancient, unlearned approximate number sense.” Researches have ongoing studies as to whether that “number sense” can be taught or improved upon.
For parents, there may be value in watching your kids. Mike’s underperformance in math may not be because of laziness or a bad teacher. It may just be harder for him. As educator Mel Levine observes, high school is the one time of life where people are supposed to be great at everything. Students are asked to be sure-footed in classes that require very different skill sets. In “real life,” we do the things we are good at and seek help with or leave the rest to others. How many of us fix our own cars and do our own taxes (both tasks that may require math skills we lack)? “I’m all thumbs” or “I never was good at math” is often met by sympathetic nods in the adult world. Turns out, such excusable deficiencies of adult life actually begin in the world of children. So, perhaps a sympathetic nod should be given to some of our kids as well.