Importance of Fingers in Math

Neuroscience Research strongly supports the use of fingers while learning math.

Importance of Fingers in Math

A specific region of our brain that is dedicated to the perception and representation of fingers, known as the somatosensory finger area of the brain. We “see” a representation of our fingers in our brains, even when we do not use fingers in a calculation.

When people receive training on ways to perceive and represent their own fingers, they develop better representations of their fingers, which leads to higher mathematics achievement. When 6-year old students improved the flexibility & quality of their finger representations, they improved in arithmetic knowledge, particularly subitizing, counting and number ordering.

Brian Butterworth, a leading brain researcher in this area, states that if students are not learning about numbers through thinking about their fingers, numbers “will never have a normal representation in the brain”.

Telling students not to use their fingers to count or represent quantities is akin to halting their mathematical development. It is important to remove the stigma from counting on fingers and to see this activity as inherently important and valuable.

Neuroscience Research of Using Fingers

Educators & philosophers always recognized the importance of hands/fingers in human cognition. Aristotle called the hand the “tool of tools”; Immanuel Kant, “the visible part of the brain”.

Recent neuroscience research has revealed the important part played by fingers in concept formation at all stages in school life.

Please refer to article "SEEING AS UNDERSTANDING: The Importance of Visual Mathematics for our Brain and Learning" by Jo Boler, Professor of Mathematics Education, Stanford University.

The main conclusion of the paper is for teachers to encourage and celebrate students' "visual approaches, focus on finger discrimination and encourage finger use". Fingers are also available to all of us 24X7. There is never going to be a time when fingers may not be available to us for computations!

Importance of Visual & Muscle Memories

Recent neuroscience research reveals the potential of visual mathematics for transforming students’ mathematical experiences and developing important brain pathways.

Embodied cognition (mind & body working together) researchers point out that many of our mathematical concepts are held as visual and sensory motor memories. When students learn through visual approaches, mathematics changes for them, and they get access to deep and new understandings.

Even when people work on a number calculation, such as 12 x 25, our mathematical thinking is grounded in visual processing.

Digital Economy is Visual

The current knowledge-digital economy is based largely on images, that are ‘rich in content and information. Today, scientists & mathematicians rarely if ever, solve a problem without visual representations. The core purpose of learning mathematics has changed from computations to representing abstract ideas.

Visual activities not only offer deep engagement and new understandings, but they show students that mathematics can be an open and beautiful subject, rather than a fixed, closed and impenetrable subject.

Effective Use of Fingers

Neuroscientists recommend that fingers be regarded as the link between numbers and their symbolic representation, and an external support for learning arithmetic problems.

They offer three recommendations for teaching and parenting.

1. Encourage and celebrate students’ visual approaches and replace the idea that strong mathematics learners are those who memorize and calculate well. Recent PISA evidence, from millions of students, tells us that the students who approach mathematics with a memorization approach are the lowest achieving students in the world

2. Discourage speed and encourage deep thinking

3. Encourage use of fingers to help visualization. More the visualization, less the emphasis on memorization