Interesting NY Times article/interactive to test your savvy about numbers

Parent Cafe
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<p>[Testing</a> Your Approximate Number Sense - Interactive Graphic - NYTimes.com](<a href=“Testing Your Approximate Number Sense - Interactive Graphic - NYTimes.com”>Testing Your Approximate Number Sense - Interactive Graphic - NYTimes.com)</p>

<p>I was not surprised to learn that my number sense is less than average.</p>

<p>"One shopping spree, two distinct number systems in play. Whenever we choose a shorter grocery line over a longer one, or a bustling restaurant over an unpopular one, we rally our approximate number system, an ancient and intuitive sense that we are born with and that we share with many other animals. Rats, pigeons, monkeys, babies — all can tell more from fewer, abundant from stingy. An approximate number sense is essential to brute survival: how else can a bird find the best patch of berries, or two baboons know better than to pick a fight with a gang of six?</p>

<p>When it comes to genuine computation, however, to seeing a self-important number like 529 and panicking when you divide it into 2,200, or realizing that, hey, it’s the square of 23! well, that calls for a very different number system, one that is specific, symbolic and highly abstract. By all evidence, scientists say, the capacity to do mathematics, to manipulate representations of numbers and explore the quantitative texture of our world is a uniquely human and very recent skill. People have been at it only for the last few millennia, it’s not universal to all cultures, and it takes years of education to master. Math-making seems the opposite of automatic, which is why scientists long thought it had nothing to do with our ancient, pre-verbal size-em-up ways.</p>

<p>Yet a host of new studies suggests that the two number systems, the bestial and celestial, may be profoundly related, an insight with potentially broad implications for math education."</p>

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<p>I tried this a couple of days ago and did very well. I’m good with math as long as it corresponds with real world situations - in college, I was absolutely terrible at multivariable calculus and sequences because I just couldn’t picture things in my head anymore.</p>

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<p>Interesting test. I did well and am pretty good at math.</p>

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<p>Likewise did well. Warning- spoiler follows- I did the colors test 30 times and if I had chosen one color all the time I would have done well also as there were mostly – circles in most tests.</p>

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<p>I don’t necessarily consider myself good at math, and I ended up with an 83% after 25 tries.</p>

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<p>I am terrible at math, I run from it and I got 92%, go figure!</p>

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<p>The first couple I missed completely, totally wrong, by the time I got to 25 tests I was at 90%, so I guess i am adaptable</p>