THE FREQUENCY OF SELECTION AND RELATIVE EFFECTIVENESS OF DIFFERENT MENTAL CALCULATION METHODS: SOME EVIDENCE FROM THE 1987 APU SURVEYS

Abstract

Some results of a reanalysis of the 1987 Assessment of Performance Unit (APU) survey data on methods used by 11-year-olds to obtain answers to mental arithmetic questions are described in this paper. The methods used by the children would almost certainly have been untaught at that time. The categories used in this analysis have been derived from the work of Beishuizen in the Netherlands and in England. The two main mental methods noted are splitting numbers into separate column values and operating on one of the unsplit or complete numbers in the required calculation. A substantial proportion of 11-year-olds who used complete number methods matched the overall performance of 15-year-olds who answered the same questions in the 1987 APU survey of that age group.