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 At-Bristol, the South West’s award winning flagship science centre will today release the results from the world’s largest maths experiment - having taken 3 years of research and involving over 7000 people. The findings of this pioneering experiment will be announced at a 9am press conference on 10 September at The BA Festival of Science, University of Salford.
The experiment was developed by Professor Brian Butterworth and his team at University College London, in collaboration with Dr Penny Fidler, At-Bristol’s neuroscientist. The new results reveal that our brains have two distinct mechanisms for doing maths, solving a question that’s puzzled scientists since 1949.
The first mechanism is the type of instant judgement you make when you see three coins on a table. You instantly know there are three, without counting, an ability most of us were born with. The second type of maths ability is the maths you were taught, including addition, subtraction, multiplication and counting.
It seems that animals may also have this first innate type of math ability. As Professor Butterworth suggests, most animals make the following judgement:
Three bears go into a cave
Two come out
Should I go in?
But the discoveries from this innovative experiment don’t end there, the vast numbers of people taking part allowed the team to look at overall trends, finding out women are quicker than men at the instant judgement type of maths.
At-Bristol is a world-leader in providing ways in which scientists and the public can work together and has approached many scientists to run experiments using the attraction’s hands-on exhibits.
Dr Penny Fidler, At-Bristol’s neuroscientist, says ’ We’re very excited about the results from this experiment. Running such large-scale experiments is a fantastic way to get the public involved in science. It’s also a brilliant opportunity for scientists and psychologists to do real-life experiments involving thousands of people from a variety of backgrounds.‘
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