kg. She gives me an example: There are 8 onions per kg. From experience she knows that


Mariama in Senegal uses similar mental


she wants to sell the onions at 500 CFA per kg; I in order to solve everyday mathematical assume that she knows that this will give her enough profit while not being too expensive for her clients.


calculation strategies to many people in the UK problems. Strategies like memory, doubling and


doubling again instead of multiplying by 4, using


near numbers and adjusting, using multiples of 5, splitting into tens and units and multiplying


When calculating the total profit from a 25kg bag those separately, are listed and encouraged to be of onions, she calculates mentally 500 CFA times


20kg, which makes 10,000 CFA. The other 5kg in Curriculum (The Basic Skills Agency 2001). I the bag will be sold for 500 CFA also, which makes a profit of 2,500 CFA. The total is 12,500 CFA, as she tells me without hesitating. She


taught in the British Adult Numeracy Core marvel at the human capacity for using


mathematical skills like mental calculation and estimation to manage our lives and deal with


takes off the 7,500 CFA that she spent on buying everyday challenges. the bag, which makes 5,000 CFA. Then she takes off the transport cost of 1,100 CFA, which leaves her with a profit of 3,900 CFA.


Bibliography


Ascher, M. (1991). Ethnomathematics: A Multicultural View of Mathematical Ideas.


I observe that instead of calculating 25x500 CFA, New York: Chapman & Hall. she calculates 20x500 + 5x500, splitting into tens and units and multiplying those separately.


Strategies Mariama uses include regrouping of concrete objects, counting and various mental calculation strategies. She is excellent at mental addition and subtraction, and does some


multiplication, but often chooses to use multiple addition rather than multiplication, especially for higher numbers. She knows many calculations by heart, especially multiples of 5.


Conclusion


The context of selling vegetables or fish at a market and cooking a rice dish in a huge pot over an open fire in Senegal is very different from vegetables or fish being sold in a


Crump, T. (1990). The Anthropology of Numbers.


Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gay, J. & Cole, M. (1967). The New Mathematics and an Old Culture: A Study of Learning among the Kpelle of Liberia. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.


Reed, H. J. & Lave, J. (1981). 'Arithmetic as a Tool for Investigating Relations between Culture and Cognition', in Casson, R. W. (ed.), Language, Culture and Cognition:


Anthropological Perspectives. New York: Macmillan.


The Basic Skills Agency. (2001). The Adult Numeracy Core Curriculum. London: CambridgeTraining and Development Ltd. Retrieved 6 February 2013 from


supermarket and food being cooked in the UK on Nunes, T., Schliemann, A. D. & Carraher, D. W. a stove. Nevertheless, in everyday life many mathematical skills that are used are very similar. Estimation is a technique employed in cooking both by women in Senegal and the UK.


http://rwp.excellencegateway.org.uk/Numeracy/. (1993). Street Mathematics and School


Mathematics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


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