[smeej]

> Why would we teach kids maths then, when they can use a calculator? It's much easier and faster for them.

I am five years older than my brother, and we happened to land just on opposite sides of when children were still being taught mental arithmetic and when it was assumed they would, in fact, have calculators in their pockets.

It drives him crazy that I can do basic day-to-day arithmetic in my head faster than he can get out his calculator to do it. He feels like he really did get cheated out of something useful because of the proliferation of technology.

[wegfawefgawefg]

Skull has limited volume. What room is unused by one capacity may be used by another.

[smeej]

Even if that were true, I can count on one hand the number of times I've needed to use anything more than basic algebra (which is basically arithmetic with a placeholder) in my adult life. I think I'd genuinely rather keep arithmetic in my head than calculator use.

[Jeff_Brown]

Is this intuition scientifically supported? I've read that people who remember every detail of their lives tend not to have spectacular intelligence, but outside of that extreme I'm unaware of having seen the tradeoff actually bite. And there are certainly complementarities in knowledge -- knowing physics helps with chemistry, knowing math and drama both help with music, etc.

[wegfawefgawefg]

Chimps have a much better working memory than humans. They can also count 100 times faster than humans. However, the area of their brain responsible for this faculty is used for language in humans... The theory is that the prior working memory and counting ability may have been optimized out at some point to make physical room, assuming human ancestors could do it too.

Lookup the chimp test. the videos of the best chimp are really quite incredible.

There is also the measured inflation of map traversing parts of the brain in pro tetris players and taxi drivers. I vaguely remember an explanation about atrophy in nearby areas of the brain, potentially to make room.