A new study suggests that practicing simple instinctive numerical exercise can improve children’s ability to solve math problems. 'We wanted to know how basic intuitions about numbers relate to mathematics development' University of Illinois psychology professor Daniel Hyde who conducted the study with Saeeda Khanum of Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad and Elizabeth Spelke of Harvard University said. 'Specifically we wanted to know whether thinking intuitively about numbers such as approximating and comparing sets without counting helps in actually doing math' he said. To test this the researchers asked first-graders to practice tasks that required them to approximate or roughly evaluate
