Indicates that there has been a lot of work done and that a great deal needs to be done in the future to explore the world of children's early number. Discusses the counting, the use of algorithm, practical mathematics, the use of manipulatives, individual differences and pedagogical concerns, and classroom applications. Contains 18 references.…

Presents the steps and lessons for making the "Measure Me" doll in which students experience numeracy when they use their own birth statistics to create a doll. Through this sequence of activities, learners relate what they already know about themselves to new situations where they compare their heights and weights with those of other children.…

Coordinates social constructivism and socioculturalism to explain 2nd grade children's reasoning with 2-digit quantities. Illustrates how the classroom teacher and the students constituted what counted as an acceptable mathematical explanation. Concludes that local classroom mathematical practices constrained and enabled the mathematical practices…

The ability of some individuals with mental retardation to identify prime numbers despite their lack of necessary arithmetical skills is discussed. The article suggests that a distinction between prime and nonprime numbers can be made by utilizing the tendency of visual perception to be symmetrically organized. (Author/DB)

Describes public key cryptography, also known as RSA, which is a system using two keys, one used to put a message into cipher and another used to decipher the message. Presents examples using small prime numbers. (MKR)

Five experiments using the visual habitation paradigm with 158 infants demonstrated that these 10-month olds did not use property/kind information to establish representations of 2 numerically distinct objects, a finding that provided support for the object-first hypothesis. (SLD)

Shares the thinking of one seventh-grade student about his discovery concerning Pythagorean triples during the study of the Pythagorean theorem. (MKR)

Investigates how students familiar with exponentiation intuitively combined information about bases and exponents in expressions of the type a(carot)n to estimate the magnitude of these expressions. Qualitative and quantitative analyses conducted on the data revealed at least five different models of magnitude estimation. Contains 17 references.…

Presents reform efforts aiming to combat underachievement in mathematics through the introduction of successful Continental pedagogy into the teaching of number concepts. Discusses the pedagogy and its introduction into the Borough's schools. Addresses some criticisms that have been leveled at the reforms. (ASK)

Numeracy may become a focus on the teaching and assessment of basic number skills. Such a focus on numeracy may de-emphasize the aim for numeracy, which is using mathematics in real contexts where the purpose of the activity is something other than just learning school mathematics. (Contains 11 references.) (ASK)

Discusses the mistakes of Kirschner, the German philosopher and mathematician, in calculating factorials of large numbers by hand in the 1600s. Uses computer technology to calculate those numbers now. (ASK)

The notions of pentagonal numbers and partitions can be understood by students at the precalculus level, and should work well in a first course in programming for high school or college students. Presents opportunities to conjecture properties of partitions from a computer program. (Contains 14 references.) (Author/ASK)

Discusses the changing perceptions of numeracy in a changing world, and puts forward arguments for integrating calculator use into the earliest school years. (Author/ASK)

Argues for the rich development of mathematical ideas that can flow from considering the apparently simple question of finding a divisibility test for the number six. Presents approaches to teaching this topic that could be interesting to teachers. (ASK)

Presents a mathematical analysis of the game "twenty-four points" that aims to apply arithmetic operations on the four numbers to reach a specific number. This game can improve children's ability to do mental arithmetic. (ASK)