Kids' real-world arithmetic skills don't transfer to the classroom
Nature Podcast
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4.4 • 859 Ratings
🗓️ 5 February 2025
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode:
00:45 How arithmetic skills don’t transfer between applied and academic environments
Mathematics skills learnt in real-world situations may not translate to the classroom and vice versa, according to a new study. A team surveyed children in India who work in markets, to see whether the skills they learnt there transferred to the classroom. While proficient at solving market-based arithmetic problems, they struggled to solve problems typically used in schools. The reverse was seen for children enrolled in schools with no market-selling experience. The authors hope this finding could help adjust teaching curricula and bridge the gap between intuitive and formal maths.
Research Article: Banerjee et al.
12:38 Research Highlights
Wolverine populations rebound in Sweden and Norway, and why wobbly arrows launch faster than rigid ones.
Research Highlight: Who’s the new furry neighbour? It might be a wolverine
Research Highlight: How a wobbly arrow can achieve superpropulsion
14:59 The unexpected movements seen in super-dense crowds
A study has revealed that when packed crowds reach a certain density, large groups of people suddenly start to move in circular patterns — a finding that could be used to identify dangerous overcrowding. By assessing footage of the densely-packed San Fermín festival, a team observed this spontaneous phenomenon, and modelled the physics underlying it. Studying the movements of giant crowds has been difficult, and the team hope this work could help event organisers to identify and respond to situations where people could get hurt.
Research Article: Gu et al.
News and Views: Crowds start to spin when their densities hit a threshold
Sound effects:
Crowd Cheering - Ambience by GregorQuendel via CC BY 4.0
Cupinzano sounds by Europa Press - Footage News via Getty Images
24:00 Briefing Chat
An update on the US National Science Foundation’s scrutinizing of grants to comply with President Trump’s directives, and why scratching an itch may have unexpected antibacterial properties.
Nature: Exclusive: how NSF is scouring research grants for violations of Trump’s orders
Nature: Why it feels good to scratch that itch: the immune benefits of scratching
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | nature in an experiment i don't know yet why is blight so far like it sounds so simple they had no idea |
| 0:10.7 | but now the data's i find this not only refreshing but but at some level astounding nature welcome back to the nature Nature. |
| 0:25.6 | Welcome back to the nature podcast. This week, how maths learnt in the classroom doesn't transfer to the real world. |
| 0:31.6 | And modelling the movement of massive crowds. |
| 0:35.6 | I'm Benjamin Thompson. |
| 0:36.6 | And I'm Lizzie Gibney. |
| 0:45.3 | First up, a new paper in nature looks at the differences in how children learn mathematics |
| 0:50.2 | in the real world versus the classroom and why those math skills may not translate between the two. |
| 0:56.9 | Here's reporter Anand Jagatir with the story. |
| 1:02.5 | Imagine you're walking through a street market in a big city like Mumbai. |
| 1:08.2 | There are stalls here selling everything from mobile phones to shoes, but you want to buy |
| 1:13.6 | some vegetables, so you find a stool and you ask for some carrots. They cost 60 rupees a kilo, and you go for |
| 1:22.6 | 400 grams. You pay with a 100-rupee note. note. How much change you do back? Now, my mental maths is pretty bad, |
| 1:32.4 | so it took me a while to work out the answer, 76 rupees. But in India, it's not uncommon to find |
| 1:38.8 | young children working on market stalls like this, and they can do calculations like that one in seconds. |
| 1:45.4 | I grew up in India. I used to tag along with my grandfather to go shopping. So I had been to |
| 1:52.0 | markets and I could see that there were kids there, 8-year-olds who could do the mathematics |
| 1:57.2 | involved in selling. This is Abidjit Banerjee, an economist at MIT. |
| 2:03.6 | You know, you could buy five things and then give them some money |
| 2:07.5 | and they have to give you the correct change back. |
| 2:09.5 | You know, quite complicated calculations. |
| 2:12.1 | And I would say, yes, they got it right. |
... |
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