Your Brain on Math

Business Insider put out a fascinating story with pictures of scans showing what happens in the brain when solving a math problem.  They indicated four distinct steps: encoding (reading and understanding the problem), planning (strategizing how to tackle the problem), solving (performing the math), and responding (typing or writing the answer)

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-brains-solve-math-problems-2016-8

The steps themselves should come as no surprise to anyone who has taught math. Our lead instructor, Elayn Martin-Gay, has been teaching these steps in our award-winning videos for over 20 years.  Science is just starting to describe what great teachers have known for decades and probably centuries.  In teaching math, we add a fifth important step of checking the answer. I would like to see what the brain looks like during that step.

 

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