Many people take a dislike to mathematics from their schooldays onwards, but why is a horror of arithmetic, algebra and geometry so widespread – and can animals really do maths? Here we answer four curious questions about calculations.
Why do so many people detest maths?
Distaste, or even fear, of mathematics is surprisingly commonplace. In his book , mathematician David Berlinski says this can be attributed to the central role played by arcane symbols, which demand great attention and provide no obvious pay-off. If you’ve ever asked yourself: “How is learning algebra going to help me in real life?”, then you know the feeling. “In mathematics, something must be invested before anything is gained,” writes Berlinski, “and what is gained is never quite so palpable as what has been invested.”
Doing maths makes me nervous. Is that normal?
Maths anxiety, a tendency to panic when asked to perform mathematical tasks, is a very real thing. But it’s an incredibly complex topic to study, says developmental psychologist at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. When a child displays it in school, for example, it’s unclear whether the anxiety stems from an aversion to mathematical symbols, an inability to use language to talk about mathematics or from social causes such as an overbearing parent.
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Why am I terrible at maths?
There are all sorts of reasons people might find maths difficult: from cultural pressures that limit achievement to a lack of interest in the subject or poor tuition. But some people have a condition called dyscalculia, which can lead to a specific difficulty with arithmetic. However, says Ansari, this isn’t due to an impairment of their innate sense of quantity or number, but rather to a struggle with the symbols.
If you can’t mentally process symbols, it can be nearly impossible to master arithmetic. For example, most of us can instantly tell that the number represented by the symbol “352” is greater than the number represented by the symbol “351” – even though we couldn’t distinguish between 351 and 352 dots. Symbols have meanings, but for children with dyscalculia, getting at those meanings is really hard. “The same genes that are associated with reading difficulties also tend to be associated with math difficulties,” says Ansari, which suggests a genetic overlap between the two types of symbolic processing.
Dyscalculia, however, doesn’t seem to noticeably affect our ability to deal with geometry, says of University College London. “What it tells me is that there is a mechanism for number processing and there is a mechanism for representing space,” he says. “If one may not be working, the other could be working fine.”
Can animals do maths?
Certainly, some individual animals have shown remarkable talent. Alex, an African grey parrot trained by Irene Pepperberg, could correctly identify sets of between two and six objects 80 per cent of the time. Ai, a chimpanzee trained by Japanese primatologist Tetsuro Matsuzawa, could do much the same.
But these animals have been extensively trained, says at the University of California, San Diego. They’re learning by association after thousands and thousands of tests, rather than grasping the symbolic meaning of numbers. It’s not unlike how we train animals to do all sorts of things they wouldn’t do in the wild. “Are elephants capable of standing on one leg on a little stool wearing a funny hat? Well, yes, if you train them for a long time,” says Núñez.
However, there is growing evidence that animals are capable of feats approaching numerical ability in their natural habitats. In the early 1990s, lions were shown to distinguish between recordings of one lion and three lions roaring. And in February, at a meeting of the Royal Society, London, researchers reported that some frogs can listen to the calls of competing frogs and either match these calls in number or go one better. And 1-day-old chicks are capable of distinguishing sets of two objects from sets of three.
Butterworth believes such findings show that animals can discriminate solely on the basis of numerical information. “We share this with many other creatures,” he says.
But this assertion remains contentious. Not everyone agrees that such results unequivocally demonstrate an animal’s instinct for numerosity.
