STEM Tuesday

Welcome to STEM Tuesday: Author Interview, a repeating feature for the last Tuesday of every month. Go Science-Tech-Engineering-Math!

This month we’ve got a treat: TWO author interviews for the price of ONE! And, of course, they’re both free.

First up, we’ve got Stephanie Gibeault, author of Calculating Chimpanzees, Brainy Bees, and Other Animals with Mind-Blowing Mathematical Abilities.

Andi: Where did you get the idea to write a book about animals and math?

Stephanie: In a way, the idea for a book on animals and math stretches back a long time. I studied animal behavior in graduate school and was a founding member of the Comparative Cognition Society. So the way animals think and how that varies between species has always been fascinating to me. Although math wasn’t my favorite subject, even back in grad school I was asking, can’t animals count? Doesn’t a bird know if one of her eggs is missing from the nest? Then, about five years ago, I read an article about how bees understand the concept of zero and a lightbulb went off. I had to search for the answers to my earlier questions. The information I found was so fascinating and surprising that I knew I needed to share it with young readers.

AD: What were you most surprised by in your research?

Stephanie: Two things most surprised me while I was researching Calculating Chimpanzees, Brainy Bees, and Other Animals with Mind-Blowing Mathematical Abilities. The first was the elegance of mathematics. Different skills, like numerosity, counting, and addition, layer on top of one another like building blocks as humans develop their math abilities. And those same building blocks appear in different species.

The second most surprising fact was the sheer number of species that possess some sort of skill with numbers. It’s not a rare ability. For example, many creatures can judge the difference between larger or smaller quantities. An animal doesn’t have to be human-like, such as a chimpanzee, to share math skills with humans. Even insects, fish, and amphibians can do incredible things. In the book, I only included a fraction of the species I could have because I wanted to explore the mathematical concept as much as the animal. But if you dive deeper into this topic (there’s an extensive bibliography and additional sources in the book), you’ll be amazed by what you find.

AD: It strikes me that this is also a book about animal-human communication. Did you think about that when writing?

Stephanie: Animal-human communication was definitely on my mind as I wrote Calculating Chimpanzees, Brainy Bees, and Other Animals with Mind-Blowing Mathematical Abilities because it’s integral to any research study on animal cognition. The introduction of the book tells the story of Clever Hans, the horse that people thought could identify colors, tell time, and do math by tapping his hoof. But it turns out that humans were inadvertently cueing Hans. The horse learned that when the humans’ body language changed, he’d reached the right answer and could put his hoof back on the ground. It’s clear from Hans that animals understand human communication, and in most cases much better than we understand theirs.

So, when scientists ask animals questions like which shoal of fish is larger or how many calls do you hear, they have to be sure they aren’t communicating any clues about the right answer. For example, when Dr. Sarah Boysen presented Sheba the chimpanzee with cards containing Arabic numerals, Dr. Boysen sat behind Sheba so she couldn’t in any way cue the chimpanzee which card to choose. As I presented different research studies in the book, I was careful to show readers that the scientists weren’t falling prey to the Clever Hans effect and were preventing animal-human communication from influencing the results of their experiments.

AD: Why include interviews with scientists (they’re fascinating, by the way!)?

Stephanie: I included interviews with scientists for two reasons. First, it was purely selfish. I remember attending conferences of the Comparative Cognition Society many years ago and listening to talks by some of the scientists I was later able to include in the book. These people helped shape my understanding of animal minds, so I jumped at the chance to talk to them about their work.

But the bigger reason was to make science and scientists real to young readers. I wanted them to hear the scientists’ own words about what they found challenging and fascinating about their experiments and subjects. I hope reading those interviews inspires kids to get excited about science and to see themselves pursuing STEM careers and one day making astounding discoveries.

AD: I’m such a fan of including activities in books. What do you think activities bring to the reading experience?

Stephanie: I think activities bring the information in a book to life. For many kids, physically doing something related to what they have just read helps to solidify the information and give it context. In the case of Calculating Chimpanzees, Brainy Bees, and Other Animals with Mind-Blowing Mathematical Abilities, readers can recreate some of the experiments described in the book and take turns being the scientist and being the subject. In other words, they can put themselves in a fish’s fins. Then, in the final activity, they are asked to design a math experiment of their own. I believe that when readers try these activities it will create a new appreciation for the scientific process and the challenges involved in exploring animal number skills. I also hope it fosters enthusiasm for the types of questions we can ask to learn more about animal minds.

Stephanie Gibeault is an award-winning author of middle grade nonfiction and picture books. As a former biologist with a master’s degree in animal behavior and a certified professional dog trainer, she has been swarmed by monkeys, grumbled at by gorillas, and covered by fur and drool. Her books have been honoured with a California Reading Association Eureka! Honor, a Mathical Honor, a Forest of Reading Silver Birch Express nomination, and Junior Library Guild Gold Standard selections. Stephanie has taught writing for Boyds Mills, The Writers’ Loft, The Writing Barn, and SCBWI. She lives just outside of Toronto where she’s always on the lookout for fascinating facts to share with kids.

And now, let’s chat with Carleigh Wu, author of Adventures in Math: How to Level Up Your Math Game.

Andi: Tell me about your math life! Is math something you’ve loved since you were a kid? How do you use it in your everyday life?

Carleigh: My feelings toward math have changed over the years. My interest in math was sparked as an adult by the book,The Man of Numbers, by Keith Devlin. It’s a story about the invention of numbers. Before reading this book, I’d always taken numbers for granted. I’d never thought of them as a human invention. With the digits 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 you can make any number! And the amazing thing about numbers is that they always work. You can learn to multiply a one digit number, and knowing that, you can multiply really big numbers, easily. I’d never appreciated long division until I read this book! And now I do. Numbers are a creative and beautiful universal language.

I use math when I’m worried about something. I use simple probability. I ask myself, is this likely or unlikely to happen? Or how can I increase my chances of success? Or make errors less likely? I also use math to do everyday tasks like track my finances, double recipes, and get places on time.

AD: I love your discussion about growth mindset versus fixed mindset! How is this helpful when thinking about learning math?

Carleigh: A problem many people have in math class is that they have gaps in their learning. And in math, ideas build, like rungs on a ladder, and if you don’t pay attention, or miss class, you will miss concepts. How can you climb a ladder when there are missing rungs? If you have a growth mindset, you believe that with effort you can learn. You will see that you need to fill the gaps in your learning, through asking for help, going back to previously taught material, using websites like Khan Academy or Zearn, or print books like JUMP math. Through hard work, you can add new rungs and climb the ladder. If you think you can, then you will put more effort into learning, and when you do, you will excel.

Growth mindset is an idea from Carol Dweck, about believing in your ability to get smarter through effort. And it’s true, you can! There are many examples of people who once thought they weren’t good at math, but learned that they could get better, and went on to do advanced math. One example is the engineer, Barbara Oakley, who thought she wasn’t good at math but then went back to school to learn math as an adult. She kept going, and got her PhD in engineering. After this experience she began writing books about how to learn tough subjects. She writes that our brains grow, and form new connections, and build stronger neural pathways. We have neural plasticity! We can get smarter.

AD: You reference LOTS of books and people – what was your research process like? What did you find most inspiring?

Carleigh: Actually, most of the research for Adventures in Math happened before I even knew I wanted to write a book about math! I love reading nonfiction and I’ve read a lot of biographies, books on psychology, math, and how we learn. I like to take notes as I read to help me remember. I wished there was a book for students that combined all of these ideas. I didn’t know of one, so I decided to write a children’s book about math. I wanted it to debunk myths and share examples of math in real-life. I wanted to write a book that might instill a growth mindset and buffer students when they one-day face a math challenge. I wanted children to know they could do it, and to keep going with math.

But putting these ideas together took time, and a lot of help from my wonderful editor, Patricia Ocampo. The theme for the book compares exploring a jungle to doing math. In my reading, I’d noticed that many mathematicians related making a discovery in math to exploring an uncharted mountain, or jungle. I found this inspiring! I thought, if a mathematician can feel lost in math, then it’s all right that I feel lost sometimes too! Sometimes we think of mathematicians as people who are really good at calculations, but they are making discoveries and at times feeling lost in the process. But the mathematicians also talked about that amazing feeling when you make a discovery and find what you’re looking for. Math is like that, even in math class, when you find a solution, you have that amazing, ah-ha moment.

AD: What do activities bring to the reading experience?

Carleigh: I think that the best way to learn material is to actively do something. For example, when you’re learning math, you can’t just watch someone answer a problem, or read a solution, you need to try it yourself, to see where you get stuck, to work through the difficulty. And with reading, it’s helpful to pause after you’ve read something, close the book even, and recall what you read, reflecting on it. Doing something related to what you read can help you learn the material so that you remember it more easily later. As a reader, I like to record quotes or jot something on a sticky note. And if I can, I like to put the ideas I read into action. As a teacher, I wanted readers to pause at the end of each chapter and think a little longer on the ideas presented.

AD: I love how you connect math and art/creativity – how does this help kids who might be struggling?

Carleigh: I hope that by connecting math and art, students see that when they create an origami figure, or make a patterned friendship bracelet, they are doing math. Math isn’t just about numbers, it’s about patterns, shapes, coding, and more. I hope that readers also see that math is important in a variety of fields and a worthwhile subject to learn. Giving up on math closes doors and puts a limit on what students can achieve. People who are comfortable with numbers have a wide variety of options for educational and career paths. I like to think of math as a skill set that you can develop, that when added to your many other skills and interests, will give you a boost to help you stand out and accomplish your big dreams. Too often we develop a narrow view of math. Hopefully, seeing math as a creative tool will broaden how students view math.

Carleigh Wu is an elementary school teacher and math coach. Carleigh’s favourite thing about numbers is how dependable they are. She can always count on them.

Andi Diehn is the author of over 20 children’s books. She also works as a children’s book editor and marketer at Nomad Press.