[ExI] relevant skills movement, was: RE: emp again

[Anders Sandberg]

I see two important aspects of learning mental arithmetic:

One is quick calculations while standing at the whiteboard in front of 
your team, working out something together. Being able to handle the 
exponents and mantissas right when you do an order-of-magnitude 
estimation of something very useful - having to look at a phone while 
doing it tends to break the flow. Similarly for many other situations, 
like checking that the store total is accurate (or when doing Fermi 
calculations for fun while queuing).

Second, learning how to do long division is an excellent introduction to 
algorithms. Recognizing that one can break down computations into parts, 
see that some methods are better than others, recognize that one can 
both blackbox the method or dive into it, and so on, gives a great sense 
of the underlying logic of math and computation.

Third, learning to maintain mental representations is good training of 
working memory. I have not seen any studies showing enhancing effects of 
maths training beyond maths, but I would not be surprised if it boosted 
frontal lobe control. You learn to maintain several chunks of abstract 
information and to run mental algorithms.

Fourth, there is general numeracy. Being able to check orders of 
magnitude is useful. Seeing how easy it is to slip with manual 
calculation makes you appreciate calculators so much more - and distrust 
people's numerical claims.


As for areas of math beyond arithmetic, I would also suggest looking at 
probability. Very easy to start by playing games and doing statistics. I 
like geometry, but probability/stats help make you more rational.

-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University