Nature's Numbers

Discovery

BBC

Science, Technology

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 11 January 2016

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Mathematics is one of the most extraordinary things humans can do with their brains but where do our numerical abilities come from? Maths writer Alex Bellos looks for answers from a tribe in the Brazilian Amazon which has no words for numbers in its language. He also meets a budding mathematician who is only seven months old.

Image credit: Edward Gibson

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for downloading from the BBC.
0:03.0	The details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use,
0:07.0	go to BBCworldservice.com slash podcasts. broadcasts.
0:18.0	This is Discovery from the BBC. I'm Alex Bellas.
0:20.0	Imagine a world without the numbers one, two and three.
0:24.0	Where? Few.
0:26.0	Some.
0:28.0	Barge so. And many.
0:29.0	A language with no words for numbers.
0:32.0	But how can you live without them?
0:34.0	Actually it turns out you can get by quite fine without numbers in a tribal society like
0:40.2	the Pita-huh.
0:40.8	One, two, three, four, one, one, two, three, four, one, two, like the Peter Hunt. One two three four.
0:44.0	One two three four.
0:46.0	Scrangely, hunter-gatherers with no numbers are helping us to understand
0:50.0	how most of us are able to count.
0:52.0	So were babies as young as seven months.
0:54.5	Kaurh is pretty amazing. She is just really intent on looking at these images.
0:59.2	She's a budding mathematician. Number are both one of the simplest and one of the most extraordinary concepts we use in daily life.
1:11.0	But where do our numerical abilities come from? It's one of the most intriguing questions
1:15.6	in psychology and the answers may revolutionize the way we teach mathematics at school.
1:21.4	Last time I searched for insights among the animal kingdom and encountered
	...

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