numeracy

How to Pass Advanced Numeracy Tests: Improve Your Scores in Numerical Reasoning and Data Interpretation Psychometric Tests
$17.95
Numerical psychometric tests, often used as part of an employer's selection procedure, represent a considerable challenge to many candidates.? How to Pass Advanced Numeracy Tests provides a wealth of highly relevant practice questions and detailed explanations to help candidates prepare for such tests. Pitched at a more advanced "graduate" level, it also has much to offer the beginner, such as a section on revising the basics. Testing areas covered include quantitative reasoning, data interpretation, and business judgment. ?With over 500 practice questions, plus four realistic practice tests, this book from testing expert Mike Bryon offers readers the opportunity to prepare themselves thoroughly.

Early Numeracy: Assessment for Teaching and Intervention
$38.95
Early Numeracy: Assessment for Teaching and Intervention is based on research about and work in the Math Recovery program. Since most American teachers will not have had training in Math Recovery, many will find this book difficult to use. It is worth the time one spends, however, because the book is filled with performance assessment tasks that can be used to help teachers uncover gaps in young children's early number sense. While the small font size and technical jargon are somewhat tedious, the book is well written and informative. I would recommend this book to teachers already somewhat familiar with children's number sense development who wish to further their learning.

Beyond Numeracy
$14.95
The book consists of short articles on key mathematical topics. The best articles are the ones really focused on mathematical or geometrical topics, especially the ones where he went down to the explanation or demonstration. Other topics like Goedel's theorem are more difficult and although one can try to understand the very broad idea behind, I could not say I have even come close to an understanding.

The articles about the philosophical detours of a mathematician were also difficult to follow. I have the impression (just a metaphor) that when we perceive a formula or mathematical or logical proposition, our brain circuitry recognizes it as such and the signals travel through a special mathematical processor that is difficult to access in regular circumstances. This would explain our fear of formulas and other logical constructions, since these neurological pathways are not the common route. Mathematicians seem to use this path as the standard route, so they talk about everyday situations in mathematical terms leaving us lay persons wondering: "What is he talking about?" So when for example a person explains a traffic light in terms of an algorithm, you know you are talking to a mathematician.

His mathematical account of the perfect democracy offered me new insights of which I had not thought of and I believe the implications of these are very important.

Since each article has no relation with the next, it is not a book that you cannot drop, you can read one chapter every now and then. The author chose an alphabetical order for his articles rather than a chronological one. This makes you jump from Aristotle and Euclid to Goedel's theorem, over Pascal's triangle and back to Pi and Pitagoras. In the end I appreciated this approach, since I did not have the impression that the more I read, the more incomprehensible or difficult it would get, I was rather glad that I could return to known terrain like Pitagoras.

All in all this is a highly recommendable book, I just would have liked some topics explained in a little more detail.