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Mathematicians at UCLA believe they have found a very long and very special prime number: It clocks in at nearly 13 million digits, and belongs to an elite group of numbers called Mersenne primes. If the math checks out, the discovery will win UCLA’s math department a $100,000 prize that was offered for the first Mersenne prime found with over 10 million digits.

Primes are numbers like three, seven and 11 that are divisible by only two whole positive numbers: themselves and one. Mersenne primes — named for their discoverer, 17th century French mathematician Marin Mersenne — are expressed as 2^P-1, or two to the power of “P” minus one. P is itself a prime number. For the new prime, P is 43,112,609 [AP].

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A new study argues that people have an intuitive understanding of numbers that closely correlates with their aptitude for complex math, and that some people are simply better at it. The research team found that 14-year-olds who were better at estimating quantities were more likely to have gotten high grades in math. Says lead researcher Justin Halberda: “We discovered that a child’s ability to quickly estimate how many things are in a group significantly predicts their performance in school mathematics all the way back to kindergarten” [Washington Post].

Researchers expressed surprise that the basic “number sense” that has been observed in some animals is linked to the ability to solve complicated equations. “Maximising your search for food, finding a seat on the bus, recognizing the difference between a mating call and an alarm call in a particular species of bird by the number of warbles — all of these require [number sense]…. What is surprising is that the formal mathematics we work so hard to learn in school … is related in any way to what a rat is doing when it is out looking for scraps of food, or what you and I are doing when we look for a seat on a bus,” said Halberda [AFP].

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Aboriginal children who lack words for numbers above two can still count the number of objects in a set, and can even perform basic arithmetic, according to a new study. Previous studies had suggested that words for specific numbers are needed for children to develop the concepts of numbers above three. But the new research suggests that humans may have an innate “number competency.” Says lead researcher Brian Butterworth: “We’re born with the ability to see the world numerically just as we’re born to see the world in colour” [BBC News].

The researchers tested Aboriginal children between the ages of 4 and 7, as well as a control group of English-speaking children from Melbourne. The Aboriginal children spoke the languages Warlpiri and Anindilyakwa, which lack a vocabulary for numbers beyond words for one, two, few, and many. “It’s not just that these cultures lack the words for numbers: they just don’t count things,” said Butterworth. Nevertheless, the kids counted just as well — and often better — than their English-speaking counterparts…. “I see it as part of a larger issue,” said Butterworth. “What kinds of cognitive tools are provided by culture, and what is provided by us when we come into the world?” [Wired News]

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It seems that the long debate over whether boys are naturally better at math than girls can finally be put to rest. Researchers examined the standardized test scores of over 7 million students in grades 2 through 11, and found no difference in performance between girls and boys.

They also checked to see if a gender gap appeared in high school, as had been shown in a study 20 years ago. But researchers found no difference in scores among today’s students, which they attributed to an increased number of girls taking advanced math classes. “Now that enrollment in advanced math courses is equalized, we don’t see gender differences in test performance,” said [study coauthor] Marcia C. Linn…. “But people are surprised by these findings, which suggests to me that the stereotypes are still there” [The New York Times].

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