We all share a sense of number!
To date, everyone who has taken the Panamath test has performed in a manner that is
generally consistent with the above figures; everyone has a number sense. What varies across
individuals (Halberda, Mazzocco & Feigenson, 2008) and across development (Halberda &
Feigenson, 2008) is the precision of this underlying gut sense of numbers. We all use our number
sense every day, oftentimes without even knowing it. Noticing that the corner market has a lot of
new fresh fruit in today; deciding which check-out line will be the fastest based on the number of
items already in the queue; choosing which lane of traffic has the fewest cars as we try to move
ahead; all of these and more involve number decisions that may engage the number sense. The
basic task in Panamath is discriminating which of two arrays of dots is larger in number.
Practicing this kind of decision in everyday life may be one of the ways you can improve your
number sense, and investigating ways of improving the number sense is an area of research that
the Panamath project is currently focusing on.
Your performance on the Panamath test may reveal something about your performance in
school mathematics, as differences in the precision of the number sense have been shown to
correlate with performance in school mathematics (Halberda et al, 2008). But no one diagnostic
tool is a “silver bullet” that can capture all of the interesting nuance that makes you - you. The
estimates from Panamath should be used in combination with other tests and assessments that
can be interpreted by a licensed professional should you have any concerns.
To learn more about the Panamath project and our research on the gut number sense and
school mathematics, please visit http://www.panamath.org to explore some of our professional
journal articles and popular press articles. If you have questions or concerns about your
mathematics abilities, please contact a school psychologist or clinician near your own home. If
you have questions or comments about the Panamath project, please see our FAQs page at
http://www.panamath.org/faqs.php or contact us directly