IS THERE A MATHS BRAIN?
L ong-running television show 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown is an edgy spoof of a letters and numbers quiz.
Hosted by comedian Jimmy Carr, a rotating panel of comics compete, with maths providing the axis for numerous jokes and jibes.
In one episode, resident maths whiz Rachel Riley neatly solves a puzzle, organising a set of six numbers and operators (+, -, x and ÷) to make them equal 576. One of the comedians responds - to laughter and applause from the audience - “What happened to you? How did you become like this? How many friends have you got?”
According to mathematician-musician Alexander Hanysz, the show reflects wider attitudes and public perceptions about maths. The contestants are consistently “quite good at the words, they're proud of it and they're creative,” he says. “And then you get to the numbers, and people revel in being bad at it. I wish we could change this about the world.”
“I'm just bad at maths” has become the popular refrain, a self-fulfilling prophecy that people are naturally pre-disposed to words or numbers, but never both. Perhaps it's no surprise, then, that the public increasingly doesn't want to do the maths, a fact borne out by statistics showing declining maths participation and performance in Australian children.
Unlike literacy skills, which are widely considered essential, the numeracy realm is regularly dismissed as an inborn ability (the idea of a
