Two Kinds of Math

I'm having a lot of fun with my daughter helping her do her fourth grade math homework. She seems very comfortable with my intuitive/shortcut-based approaches to lots of types of problems, which makes me happy. I am good at mental arithmetic, geometry and algebra, which had left me somewhat worried that I would confuse her rather than help. But it's oddly turned into a sort of father-daughter bonding thing. Her mother (QueensGal?), while quite capable of laboriously working her way on paper through any problem up through integral calculus, cannot do mental back-of-the-envelope math above the level of two digit addition with any accuracy. And she only studied as much math as absolutely necessary to get into med school, never enjoying it at all.

This article and the accompanying test make me wonder how much of that is innate, and if so, how much is inherited. For what it's worth, I scored 90% through 40 tests, doing much better after a couple of early misses. (One of the keys I discovered is to leave your eyes slightly unfocused, as when playing a fast-twitch video game). I'll report back in the comments how the QueensGals did, if I can convince both of them to take it.