Proportional Thinking (Number Sense Series, Part 3)

By Mathnasium | May 14, 2018

“If the world was the size of a basketball, my house would be as big as a flea’s flea!”

This is an example of how a seven year old once expressed proportional thinking to Mathnasium’s Co-Founder and Chief Education Officer, Larry Martinek. Of course, this seven year old didn’t know he was expressing proportional thinking at the time, he just knew it was fun to think about familiar objects changing size in relation to other familiar objects!

“Wholes and Parts” (Number Sense Series, Part 2)

By Mathnasium | March 13, 2018

Number Sense is the ability to appreciate the size and scale of numbers in the context of the question at hand. Three elements establish Number Sense: Counting, Wholes and Parts, and Proportional Thinking. We already introduced Counting in Part 1 of our Number Sense Series. Today, we will focus on Wholes and Parts.

The two aspects of the concept of Wholes and Parts form the backdrop for many mathematical concepts: fractions and complements.