The Math Gene

Why is math so hard? And why, despite this difficulty, are some people so good at it? If there's some inborn capacity for mathematical thinking—which there must be, otherwise no one could do it —why can't we all do it well? Keith Devlin has answers to all these difficult questions, and in giving them shows us how mathematical ability evolved, why it's a part of language ability, and how we can make better use of this innate talent.He also offers a breathtakingly new theory of language development—that language evolved in two stages, and its main purpose was not communication—to show that the ability to think mathematically arose out of the same symbol-manipulating ability that was so crucial to the emergence of true language. Why, then, can't we do math as well as we can speak? The answer, says Devlin, is that we can and do—we just don't recognize when we're using mathematical reasoning.

A groundbreaking book about math and language, from the well-known NPR commentator Keith Devlin.

In The Maths Gene, Keith Devlin explains how the human mind came to perform mathematical reasoning. He claims the answer lies in our genes, and reveals why some people feel they can't do maths, while a select few excel.

A new partnership of biologists and mathematicians is picking apart the hidden complexity of animals and plants to throw fresh light on the behaviour of entire organisms, how they interact and how changes in biological diversity affect the planet's ecological balance. Mathematics offers new and sometimes startling perspectives on evolution and how patterns of inheritance and population work out over time-scales ranging from millions to hundreds of years - as well as what's going on to change us right now. Ian Stewart, in characteristically clear and entertaining fashion, explores these and a whole range of pertinent issues, including how far genes control behaviour and the nature of life itself. He shows how far mathematicians and biologists are succeeding in tackling some of the most difficult scientific problems the human race has ever confronted and where their research is currently taking us.

Math is Everywhere has 365 math activities you can do with your kids.

There are two kinds of math: the hard kind and the easy kind. The easy kind, practiced by ants, shrimp, Welsh corgis -- and us -- is innate. What innate calculating skills do we humans have? Leaving aside built-in mathematics, such as the visual system, ordinary people do just fine when faced with mathematical tasks in the course of the day. Yet when they are confronted with the same tasks presented as "math," their accuracy often drops. But if we have innate mathematical ability, why do we have to teach math and why do most of us find it so hard to learn? Are there tricks or strategies that the ordinary person can do to improve mathematical ability? Can we improve our math skills by learning from dogs, cats, and other creatures that "do math"? The answer to each of these questions is a qualified yes. All these examples of animal math suggest that if we want to do better in the formal kind of math, we should see how it arises from natural mathematics. From NPR's "Math Guy" -- The Math Instinct will provide even the most number-phobic among us with confidence in our own mathematical abilities.

A basic method of analyzing particulate gene systems is the proba bilistic and statistical analyses. Mendel himself could not escape from an application of elementary probability analysis although he might have been unaware of this fact. Even Galtonian geneticists in the late 1800's and the early 1900's pursued problems of heredity by means of mathe matics and mathematical statistics. They failed to find the principles of heredity, but succeeded to establish an interdisciplinary area between mathematics and biology, which we call now Biometrics, Biometry, or Applied Statistics. A monumental work in the field of popUlation genetics was published by the late R. A. Fisher, who analyzed "the correlation among relatives" based on Mendelian gene theory (1918). This theoretical analysis over came "so-called blending inheritance" theory, and the orientation of Galtonian explanations for correlations among relatives for quantitative traits rapidly changed. We must not forget the experimental works of Johanson (1909) and Nilsson-Ehle (1909) which supported Mendelian gene theory. However, a large scale experiment for a test of segregation and linkage of Mendelian genes affecting quantitative traits was, prob ably for the first time, conducted by K. Mather and his associates and Panse in the 1940's.