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Study Suggests the Number-Line Concept Is Not Intuitive
An anonymous reader writes "The Yupno people of New Guinea have provided clues to the origins of the number-line concept, and suggest that the familiar concept of time may be cultural as well. From the article: 'Tape measures. Rulers. Graphs. The gas gauge in your car, and the icon on your favorite digital device showing battery power. The number line and its cousins – notations that map numbers onto space and often represent magnitude – are everywhere. Most adults in industrialized societies are so fluent at using the concept, we hardly think about it. We don't stop to wonder: Is it 'natural'? Is it cultural? Now, challenging a mainstream scholarly position that the number-line concept is innate, a study suggests it is learned."
Because I know most males know the number of their line, or at least what they think it is.
I thought the concept of "ruler" started with King Arthur, after a watery tart lobbed a scimitar at him.
The way that people figured this out is that if five hunters go into a forest as a group, split up and hide. Then one by one, four hunters leave one at a time. The fifth hunter stays in hiding, the monkeys come out of hunting, and the hunter shoots a monkey. This does not happen when there are less than five hunters initially.
I should hope not: if there are four hunters initially, then one by one four hunters leave, there are no hunters left to shoot the monkey. And if there are 3 or fewer hunters initially than the scenario's impossible.
rage, rage against the dying of the light
... because I use complex numbers for everything, you insensitive clod. Don't you have any feelings for the one dimensionally-challenged?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Well maybe there were just a negative number of hunters to begin with. It takes monkey smarts to realize this possibility.
Bah. Farcical aquatic ceremonies are no basis for a system of measurement.
Use of the number line is derived from a mandate of the masses. Everyone knows that.
I need to know the "watery tart lobbing scimitars" to miles conversion. The other day they was an asteroid the size of a strange woman distributing swords that burned up over California.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Once you go silverback, there's no going back.
-1 Completely misunderstanding the point of the article and comment.
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
There was this bald monkey coming out, screaming in his monkey language: "There... Are... Four... Hunters!"
And then, he died. Apparently a bad day to wear his red shirt.
Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.
It was actually "Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!"
Ah but did he "get" it or did his eternal soul "remember" it?
Hmm? hmm?
*strokes goatee while daydreaming about Plato*
I'm not sure if they've fixed it yet, but the defaults for line charts in MS Excel were insanely set to have equal spacing between data points on one axis no matter what values they have.
Thus you could have an axis that looked like:
1 4 7 8 14 35
IMHO that sort of defeats the purpose of a line graph. I can userstand linear or log scales but a random changing scale is pointless.
Physics? Is that your name for applied maths?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
In order to save time, paper, and ink, I made my number line logarithmic.
I hope you made two of them for the synergy effect.
Slide rule joke of the day:
When Noah told his menagerie "go forth and multiply", two snakes replied: "We can't, we're adders!"
Noah then built a wooden table, placed the snakes on it, and much joy and spawn ensued.
Because on a log table, even adders can multiply.
Watch kids play with Lego sometime. They'll be able to tell you why their sibling has the very brick they were going to use to make their creation. Number line they get. Fungibility of Lego bricks, they don't.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!