Criticality of Number Sense

Scientists & educators confirm that a sound foundation of number sense is very essential for mastering complex mathematical concepts.

It enables us to master abstract concepts like numbers & their relationships to be stored & manipulated in the brain as visual images (both concrete and abstract). It provides for flexibility and fluency while thinking and working with numbers.

It has been well demonstrated that children who do not acquire number sense early in their mathematics education struggle throughout their entire subsequent school and college years, and generally find themselves cut off from any career that requires some mathematical ability.

Math & digital software are developing “machines” capable of flexibly applying rule-based algorithms & “artificial intelligence” to carry out tasks which are now done by humans.

Mathematicians now need to apply “human intelligence” to bridge the gap between how machines would think and how an ordinary human would behave.

Human intelligence is far wider in scope than mere logical thinking. It is by nature “fuzzy” & “imprecise”. That is what makes a human a “human”.

The idea of number sense can seem “fuzzy” and “imprecise”. The fuzziness and imprecision of number sense is precisely the reason why it is such an important aspect of mathematics in an era where more and more of decision-making is done by machines.

In his article “Number Sense: the most important mathematical concept in 21st Century K-12 education “mathematician Keith Devlin underlines the importance of number sense for mastering concepts of math and as a corollary for 21st century K-12 education. The article can be accessed here.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/number-sense-the-most-important-mathematical-concept_b_58695887e4b068764965c2e0

The School Math Curriculum

But the reality in our schools is very depressing. The entire curriculum has no mention of number sense.

In pre-school, teachers generally do not realise the difficulty children have in understanding the idea of numbers. Their teacher certification courses do not talk about number sense and the difficulty of understanding numbers.

Most children have already acquired a rudimentary number sense at home and play. before coming to school. Hence they manage to get an understanding of number sense over a period of time.

The math syllabus focuses more on rote-learning and memorising number shapes & words and not much on understanding what numbers mean.

The reality is that children come to school with varying degrees of number sense due to the unevenness of their number experiences at home.

There are quite a few students without a robust sense of numbers. These children find math very difficult and start lagging behind in understanding math.

Hence incomprehension of math starts from the early classes.

As children proceed to higher classes, the variety of numbers they encounter& the processes associated with them also become more complex. Their incomprehension slowly develops into math avoidance, fear of math, math anxiety and math phobia.