The Number Sense
by Stanislas Dehaene · first published 1997
71% recommend29% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Explores how the brain represents numbers and quantity, drawing on cognitive science research; suits readers curious about numerical cognition or how humans intuit mathematics, not just a math textbook.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Dehaene, a mathematician turned cognitive neuropsychologist, begins with the eye-opening discovery that animals, including rats, pigeons, raccoons, and chimpanzees, can perform simple mathematical calculations. He goes on to describe ingenious experiments that show that human infants also have a rudimentary number sense. Dehaene shows that the animal and infant abilities for dealing with small numbers and with approximate calculations persist in human adults and have a strong influence on the way we represent numbers and perform more complex calculations later in life. According to Dehaene, i
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…can visualize quantities. Trying to relate tensors to the spatial geometry of the world around us -- the world we can perceive -- may not lead to much. I found this book helpful http://www.amazon.com/Number-Sense-Creates-Mathematics-Revis...
on “Ask HN: What is the right way to learn Mathematics?” ↗Most of Stanislas Dehaene's papers are excellent, if you're into that sort of thing: http://www.unicog.org/biblio/Author/DEHAENE-S.html #4, "The Number Sense", is particularly good.
on “Why we should love logarithms” ↗If you'd like to understand a little bit about how our brain might process and understand numbers, get "The Number Sense" by Stanislas Dehaene
on “Ask HN: Interesting (Non software) books?” ↗If you're interested in Numerical Cognition, I can't recommend Stanislas Dehaene's The Number Sense enough. It's fantastic.
on “In the animal kingdom, the astonishing power of the number instinct” ↗…can recommend a couple of books that I thought were particularly good: * Good questions for math teaching (http://amzn.com/0941355519) * Young Mathematicians at Work (http://amzn.com/032500353X) * Number Sense Routines (http://amzn.com/1571107908) * Dr Wright's Kitchen Table Math book (there are three) - http://amzn.com/0982921128 I haven't finished these next two, but they look promising: * Fostering Geometric…
on “How I faced my fears and learned to be good at math” ↗The trick seems to be a combination of both. Learning by rote in combination with an effective method seems to be key to strong number sense in kids. Take a look at the Triple Code Model (Dehaene & Cohen) for some more detail.
on “How to Divide any number By 9, 90, 900 and so on in just 5 seconds ” ↗My anecdote is a chapter called 'Piaget errors' in 'The number sense' http://www.amazon.com/The-Number-Sense-Creates-Mathematics/d... a book from Stanisla Dehaene. You can check out the preview but it skips a part of the piaget chapter though.
on “We consistently underestimate kids.” ↗