Not all children are made the same. Learning disabilities like dyslexia, dysgraphia or dyscalculia are either not understood or ignored in schools. As a result, the schoolchildren suffer for no fault of theirs and they lag behind in their course of learning. They may find it difficult to achieve the basic skills of learning such as reading,…

Life continues to hold considerable risk for adolescents in the United States. In 2006, the teen death rate stood at 64 deaths per 100,000 teens (13,739 teens) (KIDS COUNT Data Center, 2009). Although it has declined by 4 percent since 2000, the rate of teen death in this country remains substantially higher than in many peer nations, based…

Meeting the educational demands of the future will be expensive; however, in most states, public schools from kindergarten through the university level already experience budgetary challenges. Policymakers face the challenge of motivating taxpayers to provide the funds needed to meet mounting education needs. In this volume, Carroll and Erkut…

Governments and other stakeholders have become increasingly interested in assessing the skills of their adult populations in order to monitor how well prepared they are to meet the challenges of the new information world. The current paper provides an overview of the conceptual framework for the assessment of numeracy developed for the OECD's…

Errors in written multi-digit computation were investigated in children with math difficulties. Third- and fourth-grade children (n = 291) with coexisting math and reading difficulties, math difficulties, reading difficulties, or no learning difficulties were compared. A second analysis compared those with severe math learning difficulties, low…

The objective of this introduction to Colombeau algebras of generalized functions (in which distributions can be freely multiplied) is to explain in elementary terms the essential concepts necessary for their application to basic nonlinear problems in classical physics. Examples are given in hydrodynamics and electrodynamics. The problem of the…

Theories that explain the gender discrepancy in mathematics almost universally explain why boys are "better at math" than girls while failing to adequately account for girls' higher grades in math classes or better performances on tests of computational ability. This article develops a new, more comprehensive theoretical model that explains girls'…

Discusses the efforts of one Japanese company that makes abaci to demonstrate that the abacus continues to be a feasible alternative as a calculator in the elementary school mathematics curriculum. Argues that the abacus improves number sense, mental computation, and mathematics achievement for students who use the abacus. (MDH)

For a number of conceptually and practically important reasons, reporting of effect size estimates, confidence intervals, and power in parameter estimation is increasingly being recognized as the preferred approach in social science research. Unfortunately, this practice has not yet been widely adopted in the rehabilitation or general counseling…

The rationale underlying factor analysis applies to continuous and categorical variables alike; however, the models and estimation methods for continuous (i.e., interval or ratio scale) data are not appropriate for item-level data that are categorical in nature. The authors provide a targeted review and synthesis of the item factor analysis (IFA)…

A novel assignment exercise is described, in which students use a dictionary to estimate the size of their vocabulary. This task was developed for an introductory statistics service course, although it can be modified for use in survey sampling courses. The exercise can be used to simultaneously assess a range of core statistics skills: sample…

Background/Hypothesis: The degree of attention directed to a stimulus and the presence of anisometric representations can alter the perception of the magnitude of a stimulus. We wanted to learn if normal right-handed subjects' estimates of distance traveled are influenced by the right-left direction or hemispace of movements. Methods: We had…

This article presents a way of computing a surface integral when the vector field of the integrand is a curl field. Presented in some advanced calculus textbooks such as [1], the technique, as the author experienced, is simple and applicable. The computation is based on Stokes' theorem in 3-space calculus, and thus provides not only a means to…

The problem of motorbike feathering has been analysed by writing the angular momentum theorem for non-inertial reference systems. The acceleration, for which the ideal line joining the median points of the axles of the two wheels makes an angle [theta] with the horizontal, has been calculated neglecting air friction and considering that the…

Previous work has suggested that eye movements may be necessary for accurate enumeration beyond the subitization range of about 4 items. This study determined the frequency of eye movements normally made during enumeration, their relationship to response times, and whether they are required for accurate performance. This was achieved by monitoring…