Another great article from the New York Times. The subject is another perspective on "cognitive fitness," this time how certain kinds of math skills may have been adaptively advantageous to early humans. This apparently innate skill, which the article dubs the "approximate number sense," allows us to very quickly assess, for example, whether there is more of one food source than another or whether one bush of berries has a lot or a little food. Translated into modern life, it means we can judge, very quickly, which checkout line at the grocery store is likely to move the fastest or how long we will have to exercise to burn off that fourth (fifth? sixth?) hot Krispy Kreame donut. It also discusses how this innate talent for math might helo us learn other kinds of math, such as calculus, which seem to be difficult for so many people to learn. I like the last sentence of the article, "Behind every great leap of our computational mind lies the pitter-patter of rats’ feet, the little squeak of rodent kind." You can find the entire article here.
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