Some students are not as good at memorizing math facts as others. That is something to be celebrated, it is
part of the wonderful diversity of life and people. Imagine how dull and uninspirin it would be if teachers
gave tests of math facts and everyone answered them in the same way and at the same speed as though they
were all robots. In a recent brain study scientists examined students’ brains as they were taught to memorize
math facts. They saw that some students memorized them much more easily than others. This will
be no surprise to readers and many of us would probably assume that those who memorized better were
higher achieving or “more intelligent” students. But the researchers found that the students who memorized more easily were not higher achieving, they did not have what the researchers described as more
“math ability”, nor did they have higher IQ scores (Supekar et al, 2013). The only differences the researchers
found were in a brain region called the hippocampus, which is the area of the brain that is responsible
for memorized facts (Supekar et al, 2013). Some students will be slower when memorizing but they still
have exceptional mathematics potential. Math facts are a very small part of mathematics but unfortunately
students who don’t memorize math facts well often come to believe that they can never be successful with
math and turn away from the subject.