… while humans fight over evolution vs. creationism. I’m not surprised at the results of this study given the requirements for American college entry these days (and how unintuitive our youth have become when it comes to numerical judgments, thanks to the calculator and computer). Were the Duke college students “rewarded” for getting right answers like the monkeys were? What did they get? Bud Lite? A kegstand?
PhysOrg.com: Monkeys Perform Arithmetic As Well As College Students
“If the correct sum was 11 and the box with the incorrect number held 12 dots, both monkeys and the college students took longer to answer and had more errors. We call this the ratio effect,” explained Cantlon. “What’s remarkable is that both species suffered from the ratio effect at virtually the same rate.”
All I know is that if you gave a thousand grad students a thousand type-writers…. I’d still much prefer to read what the monkeys wrote.
After all… I certainly read a lot of blogs.
Yes, and what fascinating monkeys we are. Hey, aren’t you headed for grad school?
That’s up to the zookeepers.
The students, from Duke, got cash rewards. They actually performed better, but not by much, than the two rhesus monkeys named “Feinstein” and “Boxer”.