Post by misty on Jun 19, 2006 23:52:53 GMT -5
Number Blindness: A Hidden
Challenge for Mathematics
May 2000
by Ashish Ranpura
It's hard to imagine an aspect of daily life that is not touched by numerical ideas: telephone numbers, street addresses, radio stations, bus schedules, currency, and time all depend on a rich awareness of numbers and their meanings. The concept of numbers is ubiquitous in the modern world, and it seems at first inspection that anyone with fundamental misconceptions about numbers would be quite apparently handicapped.
This conclusion is so compelling that it remains virtually unquestioned in mathematics education. Students who appear to have fundamental difficulties with mathematics are told to study harder, to pay more attention, and to spend more time working through drills. In many cases, they are tracked into increasingly rudimentary mathematics courses until they are hopelessly behind their peers. In all cases, both teachers and students are frustrated by what seems to be a tremendous chasm separating those who "get" mathematics and those who don't............
Read the rest:
www.brainconnection.com/topics/?main=fa/number-blindness
Challenge for Mathematics
May 2000
by Ashish Ranpura
It's hard to imagine an aspect of daily life that is not touched by numerical ideas: telephone numbers, street addresses, radio stations, bus schedules, currency, and time all depend on a rich awareness of numbers and their meanings. The concept of numbers is ubiquitous in the modern world, and it seems at first inspection that anyone with fundamental misconceptions about numbers would be quite apparently handicapped.
This conclusion is so compelling that it remains virtually unquestioned in mathematics education. Students who appear to have fundamental difficulties with mathematics are told to study harder, to pay more attention, and to spend more time working through drills. In many cases, they are tracked into increasingly rudimentary mathematics courses until they are hopelessly behind their peers. In all cases, both teachers and students are frustrated by what seems to be a tremendous chasm separating those who "get" mathematics and those who don't............
Read the rest:
www.brainconnection.com/topics/?main=fa/number-blindness