February 2009
Friday 13 February 2009 heard this interview on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Start the Week’ and found it fascinating and very relevant to ‘the Numicon approach’.
DANIEL TAMMET is a writer, linguist and educator and describes himself as an ‘autistic savant’. He debunks the myths of autistic genius, arguing that savants are not ‘super computers’ but part of a spectrum of mental abilities.
By drawing on his own experiences with Asperger Syndrome, he questions the way we view intelligence and how all our minds develop. Embracing the Wide Sky is published by Hodder & Stoughton.
The programme can be heard at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/starttheweek_20090119.shtml
I have bought his very readable book where he argues that his
phenomenal mathematical ability is the result of abnormal
cross-communication between the number and language regions of his
brain, specifically activity in the region responsible for syntactical
organisation (the forming of grammatical sentences in language) . Thus,
when he sees the number 23 he “immediately thinks of meaningful
(semantic) relations such as 529 (23 squared) or 989 (the last multiple
of 23 before 1,000)”. He compares this to anyone thinking of the word
‘giraffe’ and this generating a picture in their mind and also other
associated words such as ‘tall’ and ‘neck’.
He knows the
semantic relationships between numbers because he can “visualise the
numbers as meaningful (semantic) shapes” and argues that “being able to
visualise numbers helps me to see and understand the various
interrelationships between them”.
Obviously I thought that this
was pretty interesting in relation to what we are trying to do;
providing learners with ‘objects to think with’ to support the
generation of a rich ‘concept image’ of number – so I thought that I’d
share it with you!
Mike
