Math what does mean

Show 15 more comments. Dar Far Dar Far 2 2 silver badges 11 11 bronze badges. It is also used to signify more general conruence relations. I recall years ago as a teacher writing "? Of course, that's a particularly bad idea nowadays, with "! It's curious --and unfortunate-- that the symbol for emphasis became the symbol for negation. Granted, ASCII isn't the richest glyph set, and coders needed something , but why settle on the symbol that means in prose the exact opposite of what it means in code?

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Apr 28, Rating. Those nine mental capacities are: 1. Number sense. This includes, for instance, the ability to recognize the difference between one object, a collection of two objects, and a collection of three objects, and to recognize that a collection of three objects has more members than a collection of two.

Number sense is not something we learn. Child psychologists have demonstrated conclusively that we are all born with number sense. Numerical ability. This involves counting and understanding numbers as abstract entities. Early methods of counting, by making notches in sticks or bones, go back at least 30, years. The Sumerians are the first people we know of who used abstract numbers: Between and B.

Spatial-reasoning ability. This includes the ability to recognize shapes and to judge distances, both of which have obvious survival value for many animals. A sense of cause and effect. Much of mathematics depends on "if this, then that" reasoning, an abstract form of thinking about causes and their effects. The ability to construct and follow a causal chain of facts or events. A mathematical proof is a highly abstract version of a causal chain of facts. Algorithmic ability.

This is an abstract version of the fifth ability on this list. The ability to handle abstraction. Humans developed the capacity to think about abstract entities along with our acquisition of language, between 75, and , years ago. Logical-reasoning ability. The ability to construct and follow a step-by-step logical argument is another abstract version of item 5. Relational-reasoning ability. This involves recognizing how things and people are related to each other, and being able to reason about those relationships.

Much of mathematics deals with relationships among abstract objects. All nine capacities are basic mental attributes important to our daily lives. The human brain had acquired them all by 75, years ago at the latest.

A question that arose while I was writing The Math Gene, but which I did not pursue very far at the time, was to what extent those nine mental capacities could be found in creatures other than ourselves? To put it bluntly: is doing math a uniquely human activity? This is where you need to decide what you will accept as "doing math. But if you do want to make that your definition of doing mathematics, then you should be consistent. For example, when we use a calculator or a computer to solve a math problem, would you say we are still doing mathematics?

Surely yes. But in many cases, the calculator especially if it is a fancy graphing calculator or computer especially if it is running software such as Mathematica is performing crucial steps that the user initiates but does not actively control, may not be aware of, and may not understand.