Research into dyscalculia doesn’t add up

Posted on by

News from the web:

An international paper has called for a greater research focus on dyscalculia, the mathematical equivalent of dyslexia, saying it could lift economic growth.

Dyscalculia is estimated to affect up to seven per cent of the population, making it as common as dyslexia.

But, in a review published today in the journal Science, lead author Professor Brian Butterworth, of the University College London, and colleagues label the disorder a “poor cousin” of its literary stablemate.

“The relative poverty of dyscalculia funding is clear from the figures. Since 2000, the National Institute of Health has spent US$107.2 million (AU$100 million) funding dyslexia research but only US$2.3 million (AU$2.16 million) on dyscalculia,” they write.

Read all about it HERE

Visit us at Dyscalculia Headlines
A service from Math and Dyscalculia Services

Estimation without Counting Observed in Artificial Neural Network

Posted on by

News from the web:

Researchers have been wondering for a long time how humans learn. After all, no one is born with an understanding of math or language, yet both of these develop throughout early life. In the case of math at least, many forms of life, including humans, have demonstrated an ability to understand when one set is larger than another, without counting the items. Now a virtual neural network has done the same.

This neural network was designed only to mimic the retina of an eye and then generate false images, similar to what it originally saw. How the neurons fire as the original image is viewed and the false ones made is recorded. The researchers found the lowest level of neurons, those furthest from the virtual retina, were firing based on the number of objects in the original image, despite the fact that there is no understanding of numbers in the program. This information was then given to a second program which was able to estimate whether the image had more or fewer objects than some reference number the researchers also gave it.

Read all about it HERE

Visit us at Dyscalculia Headlines
A service from Math and Dyscalculia Services

Brain Awareness Week

Posted on by

News from the web:

Brain Awareness Week (BAW) is the global campaign to increase public awareness of the progress and benefits of brain research.

Every March, BAW unites the efforts of partner organizations worldwide in a celebration of the brain for people of all ages. Events are limited only by the organizers’ imaginations and include open days at neuroscience labs; exhibitions about the brain; lectures on brain-related topics; displays at libraries and community centers; classroom workshops; and more.

Read all about it HERE

Visit us at Dyscalculia Headlines
A service from Math and Dyscalculia Services

The Way You Learned Math Is So Old School

Posted on by

News from the web:

Your fifth-grader asks you for help with the day’s math homework. The assignment: Create a “stem-and-leaf” plot of the birthdays of each student in the class and use it to determine if one month has more birthdays than the rest, and if so, which month? Do you:

a) Stare blankly

b) Google “stem-and-leaf plot”

c) Say, “Why do you need to know that?”

d) Shrug and say, “I must have been sick the day they taught that in math class.”

If you’re a parent of a certain age, your kids’ homework can be confounding. Blame it on changes in the way children are taught math nowadays — which can make you feel like you’re not very good with numbers.

Read all about it HERE

Visit us at Dyscalculia Headlines
A service from Math and Dyscalculia Services

Dyscalculia from Pondering the Classroom

Posted on by

News from the web:

When I teach Managerial Accounting, I emphasize to students that in many areas of business it is necessary to read numbers and understand the patterns that are present. I have always wondered why some very smart students who study are unable to do either one. Perhaps it is due to dyscalculia.

Two fundamental skills underlie almost everything I do in the course:

Starting with the average cost for some amount of units and then calculating the resulting total cost, and vice versa.
Identifying the pattern inherent in a sequence of numbers and calculating what would come next, or what came before.

Read all about it HERE

Visit us at Dyscalculia Headlines
A service from Math and Dyscalculia Services