> The Pirahâ (who I've mentioned already, and who seem to be a useful
> counter-example to everything) are one such society. They did want to
> learn numeracy skills, to avoid being ripped-off in barter, and the
> linguist/anthropologists living with them spent about a year trying to
> do so. These efforts produced no successes at all. The Pirahã
> couldn't accept various logically prior notions like "some questions
> must always have the same answers".
Interesting -- could it be because they missed the age at which mathematical instruction should start, somewhat like the case of foreign languages, which get harder to learn as one leaves childhood? Or would a different method from the one these anthropologists used get better results? (They were not math teachers after all; perhaps professional remedial math teachers would have been more suited to the task.)
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, 'You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk-dancing.' -- Sir Arnold Bax