Preschoolers can do algebra: Researchers

MUMBAI: There is worse news for those who hated algebra at school. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have found that algebra is literally a child's play. Most preschoolers and kindergarteners can do algebra before even entering a math class, they found.

In a recently published study in the journal Developmental Science, lead authors Melissa Kibbe and Lisa Feigenson found that most preschoolers and kindergarteners, or children between 4 and 6, can do basic algebra naturally.

"These very young children, some of whom are just learning to count, and few of whom have even gone to school yet, are doing basic algebra and with little effort," Kibbe said. "They do it by using what we call their 'Approximate Number System:' their gut-level, inborn sense of quantity and number."

The "Approximate Number System," is also called "number sense," and is the ability to quickly size up the quantity of objects in their everyday environments.

Kibbe posed algebra problems using two furry stuffed animals — Gator and Cheetah - and "magic cups" filled with objects like buttons, plastic doll shoes and pennies.

Children were told that each character's cup would "magically" add more items to a pile of objects already sitting on a table. "But children were not allowed to see the number of objects in either cup: they only saw the pile before it was added to, and after, so they had to infer approximately how many objects Gator's cup and Cheetah's cup contained," said a release from Johns Hopkins.

At the end, the examiner pretended that she had mixed up the cups, and asked the children — after showing them what was in one of the cups — to help her figure out whose cup it was. The majority of the children knew whose cup it was, a finding that revealed for the researchers that the pint-sized participants had been solving for a missing quantity, which is the essence of doing basic algebra.

"What was in the cup was the x and y variable, and children nailed it," said Feigenson.

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