[HN Gopher] Attention Spans for Math and Stories (2019)
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Attention Spans for Math and Stories (2019)
Author : ibobev
Score : 74 points
Date : 2025-04-16 20:13 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.jeremykun.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.jeremykun.com)
| aoki wrote:
| > 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.
| ho_schi wrote:
| Were was this person when I was a child?
|
| Okay. I wasn't a scout. But a good approach through storytelling!
| wslh wrote:
| 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!
| vonnik wrote:
| 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.
| sinenomine wrote:
| 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.
| j2kun wrote:
| 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.
| sinenomine wrote:
| ... 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.
| j2kun wrote:
| 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."
| sinenomine wrote:
| 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=10.13
| 71/jou... 2.
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5290743/
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| 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.
| GTP wrote:
| Not an expert in relevant fields by any means, but are
| you sure that "academic dynasties" are due to genetics
| and not social factors?
| AudiomaticApp wrote:
| Anyone familiar with Murderous Maths?
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