On Monday we had an input with Richard about the origin of number systems. The first question we got asked was whether or not we believed animals could count or not. My initial reaction was “no? obviously not.”, but when we discussed the possibilities of it it did not seem as ridiculous as I had first thought. We looked at a study to do with ants, and how they could possibly know exactly how many steps were needed to be taken in order for them to reach their nests. In the study, the ants’ legs were shortened and lengthened, and when this happened they went just short, and further than the nest, which could represent the ants actually counting! We then considered that perhaps ants and other animals can’t actually count but have in fact memorised a pattern or sequence that they have done over and over again. We also looked at Ayumu the chimpanzee, who was able to recall the order of eight separate digits in the correct numerical order when the numbers were only displayed for 0.21 seconds and the order of 5 digits recalled when displayed for 0.09 seconds. This sounded impressive, and the video footage we watched made that even clearer. However when we considered that at the London Olympics, Usain Bolt’s reaction time to the starting pistol was 0.165 seconds, it was even more impressive. I personally didn’t believe that Ayumu knew the correct order of the numbers, but instead could recognise the shape of each number and simply memorise that the shape of 1 comes before the shape of 2, etc.
After looking into a few studies on animals and whether they could perhaps count or understand the concept of counting, I considered that perhaps, as humans, we see numbers in a very similar way to animals. Realistically when we count we are just memorising a series of numbers, and when we look at these numbers we are really just recognising shapes and associating them with their numerical value.
Richard then asked us to come up with our own number system. This could consist of a variety of symbols, and we were allowed to create this and present our systems to others in the class.
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This was the number system that Erynn and I created. Our system works on bases of 10, therefore the circles represent numbers between 1 and 10, the triangles represent numbers from 11 to 20 and the squares represent numbers from 21 to 30 and so on. The lines coming out of the shapes are how you identify which specific number it is, i.e 1 line = 1, 11, 21 etc. Our system is not the easiest to write down and seems to require a lot of thought, unlike our own number system where we automatically recognise a shape and associate it with its numerical value. In hindsight I found creating a number system a lot easier and less daunting than I had first anticipated and feel that the whole input gave me a different perspective on counting and number systems as basic ideas of mathematics.
