I have found something similar to be true when it comes to building.
Some years ago, John Collison tweeted that he realized everything he saw in the built environment had once been someone’s passion project.
I think there’s another, maybe more interesting way to say it, which is that everything built embodies a story both in how its internal parts relate to each other, and how those parts relate to the rest of the world, say, the humans who use a building.
I realized this watching my 6yo, who loves stories, place each new Lego brick into a building or vehicle and explain what it contributed, and how it would be useful. The bricks were stuck together with explanations.
Talking about this later with a friend who does design, he made me see that this is what design is. And that the stories change after the object is built, as the humans bring new needs and expectations to objects. Everything is its own Gestalt and the Gestalt is dynamic over time.
> What’s really needed is more story-focused content between basic number sense and undergraduate level math. YouTube channels like Numberphile (particularly Tadashi Tokieda’s episodes that explore curious toys) are a fantastic invitation. More could exist in various forms, particularly those that transition from these delightful introductions to deeper, more complete theories while still holding on to the stories. The closest I’ve found for young children is the comic book series Beast Academy.
There's at least one manga series focused on teaching secondary-level maths. It's a bit dry but gets the job done as an introduction. For something a bit more... specific and involved, there's Cipher Academy, a shonen series where all of the battles take the form of cryptography challenges, often based on esoteric Japanese cultural knowledge (the original English translator dropped the series because it was next to impossible to localize things like "a cipher based on mapping the Japanese syllabary to a list of prefectures").
- In "What Is the Name of This Book?" he recalls being introduced to logic at the age of six.
- In "The Lady or the Tiger?" (if I remember correctly), a friend asks Raymond not to tell his child that the puzzles he's enjoying are actually math because he hates math!
Story telling is hard but one trick which has been really helpful to me is telling the history behind the actual invention of a mathematical concept, what was the problem, who solved it and how aids in understanding and memory than just bombard young minds with equations and tables.
My son read some of these books about a year ago. I'm sure a lot of the content was over his head, but he enjoyed the books enough to continue reading.
I'm expecting him to re-read the whole set at least twice.
(BTW if you're in the UK, you can often find the complete set of 10 books on eBay for £12 including delivery.)
The existence of this article is explained by simple fact of nature: regression to the mean applies, on average, to heritability of various quantitative human traits, such as general intelligence and mathematical aptitude (and to more specific parameters such as working memory and attention span).
Talented mathematicians are visibly disappointed when their child turns out more re average than them and try to compensate via clever early education schemes that are unlikely to work out given what we know about heritability of these traits.
Another take is that, if only people did the simple step of telling stories, it would trivially elevate the "average" ability, implying the obvious fact that math ability is largely influenced by the contemporary social attitudes towards it.
... Or is it? If it is mostly heritable, pushing children into it will merely bring sorrow. I'm simply against ruining childhood of those who don't have it in them.
Environmental interventions are devilish: promising and not delivering excellence, yet consuming valuable time and effort.
The problem with all these arguments is that they also apply to reading, and nobody believes that reading is heritable and that teaching kids to read would ruin their childhood.
In other words, nothing about reading is natural, and nothing about what you're saying is a "fact of nature."
Reading should be considered a basic ability not hindered much even by average intelligence and being amenable to rote learning. A tangent, but I also wouldn't rule out specific adaptations for reading having been evolved during the last 10k years.
Math is a very specific ability and interest, requiring not just high general intelligence but some additional elusive factor (also likely heritable, as anybody observing "academic dynasties" would note). There is research on this [1] [2], but not nearly enough to say much more.
Anyway, I hope I explained my position on this. It's not the specific gene variants or mechanisms that matter, but basic threshold effects over polygenically heritable traits, and hard diminishing returns on teaching someone who does not meet the talent requirement.
Reading is also a bit different in that its everyday utility is blindingly apparent, even to children, which can give strong motivation to learn. My parents have told me that I wanted to learn to read just to know what all of the text I was surrounded with in daily life said, and one of my younger siblings had a strong motive in wanting to better understand and play video games.
Beyond basic arithmetic, the utility of math is not nearly as obvious or widely applicable. It feels much more detached and abstract and this is made worse by popular teaching methods (which frequently lack hands-on examples of the math in question in practical application). It’s only natural that many children, even those who are capable, don’t take interest.
I have found something similar to be true when it comes to building.
Some years ago, John Collison tweeted that he realized everything he saw in the built environment had once been someone’s passion project.
I think there’s another, maybe more interesting way to say it, which is that everything built embodies a story both in how its internal parts relate to each other, and how those parts relate to the rest of the world, say, the humans who use a building.
I realized this watching my 6yo, who loves stories, place each new Lego brick into a building or vehicle and explain what it contributed, and how it would be useful. The bricks were stuck together with explanations.
Talking about this later with a friend who does design, he made me see that this is what design is. And that the stories change after the object is built, as the humans bring new needs and expectations to objects. Everything is its own Gestalt and the Gestalt is dynamic over time.
> What’s really needed is more story-focused content between basic number sense and undergraduate level math. YouTube channels like Numberphile (particularly Tadashi Tokieda’s episodes that explore curious toys) are a fantastic invitation. More could exist in various forms, particularly those that transition from these delightful introductions to deeper, more complete theories while still holding on to the stories. The closest I’ve found for young children is the comic book series Beast Academy.
There's at least one manga series focused on teaching secondary-level maths. It's a bit dry but gets the job done as an introduction. For something a bit more... specific and involved, there's Cipher Academy, a shonen series where all of the battles take the form of cryptography challenges, often based on esoteric Japanese cultural knowledge (the original English translator dropped the series because it was next to impossible to localize things like "a cipher based on mapping the Japanese syllabary to a list of prefectures").
Two other stories by Raymond Smullyan:
- In "What Is the Name of This Book?" he recalls being introduced to logic at the age of six.
- In "The Lady or the Tiger?" (if I remember correctly), a friend asks Raymond not to tell his child that the puzzles he's enjoying are actually math because he hates math!
Story telling is hard but one trick which has been really helpful to me is telling the history behind the actual invention of a mathematical concept, what was the problem, who solved it and how aids in understanding and memory than just bombard young minds with equations and tables.
Anyone familiar with Murderous Maths?
My son read some of these books about a year ago. I'm sure a lot of the content was over his head, but he enjoyed the books enough to continue reading.
I'm expecting him to re-read the whole set at least twice.
(BTW if you're in the UK, you can often find the complete set of 10 books on eBay for £12 including delivery.)
Were was this person when I was a child?
Okay. I wasn’t a scout. But a good approach through storytelling!
The existence of this article is explained by simple fact of nature: regression to the mean applies, on average, to heritability of various quantitative human traits, such as general intelligence and mathematical aptitude (and to more specific parameters such as working memory and attention span).
Talented mathematicians are visibly disappointed when their child turns out more re average than them and try to compensate via clever early education schemes that are unlikely to work out given what we know about heritability of these traits.
Another take is that, if only people did the simple step of telling stories, it would trivially elevate the "average" ability, implying the obvious fact that math ability is largely influenced by the contemporary social attitudes towards it.
... Or is it? If it is mostly heritable, pushing children into it will merely bring sorrow. I'm simply against ruining childhood of those who don't have it in them.
Environmental interventions are devilish: promising and not delivering excellence, yet consuming valuable time and effort.
The problem with all these arguments is that they also apply to reading, and nobody believes that reading is heritable and that teaching kids to read would ruin their childhood.
In other words, nothing about reading is natural, and nothing about what you're saying is a "fact of nature."
Reading should be considered a basic ability not hindered much even by average intelligence and being amenable to rote learning. A tangent, but I also wouldn't rule out specific adaptations for reading having been evolved during the last 10k years.
Math is a very specific ability and interest, requiring not just high general intelligence but some additional elusive factor (also likely heritable, as anybody observing "academic dynasties" would note). There is research on this [1] [2], but not nearly enough to say much more.
Anyway, I hope I explained my position on this. It's not the specific gene variants or mechanisms that matter, but basic threshold effects over polygenically heritable traits, and hard diminishing returns on teaching someone who does not meet the talent requirement.
1. https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou... 2. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5290743/
Reading is also a bit different in that its everyday utility is blindingly apparent, even to children, which can give strong motivation to learn. My parents have told me that I wanted to learn to read just to know what all of the text I was surrounded with in daily life said, and one of my younger siblings had a strong motive in wanting to better understand and play video games.
Beyond basic arithmetic, the utility of math is not nearly as obvious or widely applicable. It feels much more detached and abstract and this is made worse by popular teaching methods (which frequently lack hands-on examples of the math in question in practical application). It’s only natural that many children, even those who are capable, don’t take interest.
Not an expert in relevant fields by any means, but are you sure that "academic dynasties" are due to genetics and not social factors?