Dyscalculic. Dyscalculia or math disability is just a specific learning disability involving innate difficulty in learning or comprehending simple mathematics.

Dyscalculic. Dyscalculia or math disability is just a specific learning disability involving innate difficulty in learning or comprehending simple mathematics. It is akin to dyslexia and includes difficulty in understanding numbers, learning just how to manipulate numbers, learning math facts, and many other related symptoms (although there is no exact type of the disability). Dyscalculia occurs in individuals throughout the IQ that is whole range.

Signs include:

  • Inability to understand planning that is financial budgeting
  • Difficulty with conceptualizing time and judging the moving of time. Might be chronically late or early
  • Usually unable to understand and remember mathematical concepts, rules, formulae, and sequences
  • Difficulty navigating or mentally ‘turning’ the map to manage the direction that is current than the common North=Top usage
  • Inability to concentrate on mentally tasks that are intensive

As in: ‘we have always been beginning to wonder if I’m dyscalculic because I can not appear to enhance my math SAT rating, despite all of my studying.’

University as Profession Training

Interesting conversations happening in the comments of this post, one of which has to do with whether or not college should be profession training.

As a liberal arts degree holder, i would ike to believe my young ones could have that same possibility, if they were therefore inclined. In my own fantasy world, they utilize summer internships to explore career options and get to study art, literary works and history in university. Am we dreaming?

Elise, an engineer, and commenter below, is the mom of 3 effective children, one of whom got an 800 on the math SAT and is valedictorian of his class. She believes college is career training.

Thankfully, The Chronicle of Higher Education just published the Median Earnings by Major, for the practically minded.

Learn how to Mastery, Then Add 20% More Research Time

A weeks that are few, my pal Catherine said, ‘Debbie, it is time and energy to read Daniel Willingham.’

Willingham is a professor of cognitive psychology during the University of Virginia. His website is really a treasure trove of useful details about exactly how we learn.

From Willingham’s article, What Will Improve A student’s Memory:

Wanting to remember some-thing doesn’t have bearing that is much whether or perhaps not you will actually remember it….Here’s the manner in which you should consider memory: it’s the residue of thought, meaning that the greater you consider something, a lot more likely it really is that you’ll remember it later.

Pupils allocated, on average, just 68 percent of the right time had a need to get the target score. We are able to sum this up by saying the third concept is that people tend to think their learning is more complete than it certainly is.

The final strategy to avoid forgetting is always to overlearn…..Students should study until they know the material and then keep studying……A good rule of thumb is to place in another 20 percent of the time it took to master the material.

The whole article is well worth the read.

I’ve been doling out the tips like little Scooby treats to my son, as he prepares for finals. Interestingly, he’s interested and it is using the advice.

The Benign Cousin to Rote Knowledge

The greater I read Daniel Willingham, the essay writer for you com more I comprehend why the SAT is really difficult for me personally. I’m lacking the inspiration knowledge that I have to issue re solve on these tests.

From Willingham’s article on Inflexible Knowledge:

An even more benign cousin to rote knowledge is what I would call ‘inflexible’ knowledge. At first glance it might appear rote, but it is perhaps not. And, it is incredibly important to students’ education: Inflexible knowledge seems to function as the unavoidable foundation of expertise, including that component of expertise that enables individuals to fix novel problems by applying knowledge that is existing new situations—sometimes known popularly as ‘problem-solving’ skills.

Knowledge is flexible when it can be accessed out of the context in which it had been discovered and applied in brand new contexts. Flexible knowledge is of course a desirable goal, but it is not an effortlessly achieved one. When encountering new material, the human head appears to be biased towards learning the surface features of problems, perhaps not toward grasping the deep structure that is necessary to obtain flexible knowledge.

Over Twenty Thousand Students Took SAT Prep in China Last Year

As my SAT scores continue to plateau, despite months of study and determination (and a complete large amount of fun), I’ve stomped my feet and declared on significantly more than one occasion: ‘Who are these kids rocking the SAT and what are their parents feeding them?’

From Might 5, 2011 Company Week:

Twenty thousand students took prep that is SAT China with ‘New Oriental’ last year, representing at the very least a 90 percent share of that market……

‘New Oriental appears to have cracked the code that is SAT’ says Phillip Muth, associate dean for admissions at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Its 1,200 applicants from China this year had on average 610 out of 800 on the SAT’s reading area and 670 in writing, in place of 641 in reading and 650 in writing for U.S. applicants. In mathematics, an average was achieved by them of 783, in contrast to 669 for U.S. students. ‘

It is not lost on me personally either that English is a second language.