[Math EC Blog] Monkeys Can Do Mental Math! =O

Who: Monkeys!

What: Researchers from Duke University looked farther into the earlier findings of Japanese researchers. These findings stated that young chimps could perform better than human adults at memory games. They can also match numbers of objects, compare numbers, and choose the larger set of two groups of objects. Tests resulted in finding out that these monkeys performed nearly as well as college students when it came to mental math. To further test this, 14 Duke students were put up against two female rhesus macaques (monkeys) named Boxer and Feinstein. The humans were told that they could not verbalize or count. Generally, both the animals and the students answered each question in less than a second. When the students worsened, so did the primates. When something was more difficult to determine, it took a toll on all test takers. The ratio effect also made a difference in their ability to answer the questions as quickly. So if the ratio was smaller in difference, it would be tougher to answer. At the end, results showed that the humans correctly answered 94% of the questions correctly, while the monkeys were right about 76% of the time. This goes to prove how similar the human race is with this remarkable species and how important language is to every topic, even mental math.

When: The article was posted today, February 17th, at 8:50 p.m.

Where: Duke University was the place where everything was held and observed.

Why: American researchers wanted to continue the previous studies of some Japanese researchers.

My Opinion: It's cool how close we are in educational skills with monkeys. This article showed how both species will work better or worse at the same times and when the same changes took place. I would actually enjoy being able to look further into this study, as did the students at Duke University!

Article here.