“Young children reinvent arithmetic. Spontaneously or by imitating their peers, they imagine new strategies for calculation. They also learn to select the best strategy for each problem. The majority of their strategies are based on counting, with or without words, with or without fingers. Children often discover them by themselves, even before they are taught to calculate.”
― Stanislas Dehaene, The Number Sense: How the Mind Creates Mathematics
"[We should strive for] progressive enrichment of children’s intuitions, leaning heavily on their precocious understanding of quantitative manipulations and of counting. One should first arouse their curiosity with some amusing numerical puzzles and problems. Then, little by little, one may introduce them to the power of symbolic mathematical notation and the shortcuts it provides — but at this stage, great care should be taken never to divorce such symbolic knowledge from the child’s quantitative intuitions." --Stanislaus Dehaene
Get to Know Us
Number Autobiographies
We all use elements of number sense (subitizing, counting, estimation, place value, computation, number composition/decomposition, fact fluency) in daily life. Get to know the contributors to this website by reading a bit about number sense in our daily experiences.
Hello
My name is Dr. Carrie Cutler
I use subitizing when I pick my sons' legos off the floor. I find myself saying, "Here's a handful of three. This time I grabbed two" without even counting. I use estimation to plan how much time it will take to commute to campus from my home in The Woodlands. I use computation to figure out how many loads of laundry I do each week--at least 8! Place value understanding comes in handy when I budget for my 3 college students' tuition and my missionary son's monthly fees. I count heads to make sure I don't leave any of my kids behind after rugby practice. I've done lots of workshops on number sense. It's so fun to make math meaningful for children!
Hello
My name is Jay Trueheart
I utilize subitizing and estimating when we go get groceries as a family. We have a quick family math competition at the checkout line. We would compete by guessing the total amount of items in the cart and the total cost. My daughter still doesn't know why I am so good at this game.
As a family, we love to play cards. We play GoFish, War, and Uno to name a few. When playing cards we learned to work with numbers: pairing numbers or composing numbers in GoFish; discerning which number is greater in War; pairing numbers to stack combinations and utilizing our counting skills in Uno.
Hello
My name is AJ Barnes
I use subitizing when I distribute a sample of jelly beans to my students for a statistics activity and quickly judge how many beans of a certain color there are. I count the number of empty seats in the classroom to determine how many students are absent in my very large first period class. I estimate how long it will take for the next Metrorail train to arrive at the platform when I travel to and from school. I use computation to calculate how many trips to visit my parents in Humble I can make before I will need to fill gas. I use number decomposition to calculate how much of a stock I can buy with leftover cash I have saved to invest. In this picture (I am on the left and my cousins are on the right), I am estimating how many crawfish we boiled and how long it will take us to eat all of them!
Hello
My name is Reynaurora Resendez
As a teacher, I use estimation when something unexpected happens at school to find how much time I might have available to teach my students (2 Classes) and to get everything done. I am a person that likes to create budgets for each month, so I use place value to help me have a clear idea of how much money I will spend and how much money will be saved. I use computation to figure out my kids' AR points when they read books and take the tests about them. I use counting and estimation when my daughter participates in Jiujitsu tournaments to count her points after each match and to estimate if she has won a place (Picture).
Hello
My name is Veronica "Brooke" Newsome
Within teaching, I use number sense for subitizing, making 10 or 100, recognizing patterns, etc. At the gas station and grocery store, I am quickly estimating and adding up my bill so that I am not shocked when getting to the register. In this picture, I am counting starbursts and arranging them where each student can get one of each color. I am counting to see if I can make 49 bags for my students.
Hello
My name is Daisy Gomez
In fourth grade we are learning how to solve long division problems. To try to relate the problem to real-world problems, I use beans to make groups. I also use subitizing and counting while I am working out at the gym. When we need to do a certain number of repetitions, I like to chunk the total into smaller numbers so I can get through the workout a lot quicker. For example, if I need to do 30 burpees, I'll start with 10, then continue by sets of 5.
