I am researching/studying...the impact/influence of mathematics on the thinking process and capacity of working/short/long-term memory...because I want to find out...how influential mathematics is on the brain (through the uses of patterns and sequences, abstract thinking, application of theories, rules, etc.)...in order to help my reader understand...the importance of mathematics and how it can help/hinder your mental capabilities.
By looking at the three base phrases and trying to complete the sentence, it helped me finally spit out in words exactly what it is I am looking to do for my project. Once I got it out on paper, my classmates started to comment on it to help me either clarify it more for the audience or give me ideas that I might want to look into once I start doing research.
A few people were commenting that I should look at different parts related to the brain. They suggested looking at fluid/crystallized intelligences and brain lateralization, looking into mental disorders such as Alzheimer's. This gave me the idea to visit an assisted living facility and maybe see if I can do mathematical activities with some of the Alzheimer's patients and see if the activities do anything to help their memory capabilities. This would involve solving logic problems and puzzles like Sudoku.
As far as the thinking process, I'm not sure exactly how I want to approach it yet, but i think it will involve doing an experiment in which I take students on campus from different majors, have them try to remember a series of numbers, patterns, etc, and see how well they are remembered and the strategy used to remember them.
It's a work in progress, but I am finally getting somewhere where I can start planning out where I want to go with my experiment and get helpful input/feedback from my classmates!
I think this sounds awesome! I was actually the one who commented on your paper about dementia patients. I think that your "in order to help your reader understand" part is great. Thats the part that makes people care about your research/project. If people saw that math has the ability to enhance memory I think everyone would be trying harder in class and doing sudokus all the time. I think you have two different approaches though, with looking at elderly patients and then looking at college students so that may be something you want to refine more? See if you can link the two together a little more? Or you could just focus on one of them: look at healthy elderly people vs. Alzheimers patients. Stronger students (honors) vs. weaker students (math tutees/learning center)...see what trick the better students have? I think they are both great ideas, memory and thinking process and I agree that math influences them both. My only concern is them being two different studies? My advisor and I talked a lot about trying to narrow it down and I was reluctant because there were several different approaches I wanted to take for my project. The thing is we only have a year to do it, and you don't want to overwhelm yourself or take on too much. She gave me some good advice: "pick one avenue and dive in without looking back." Good luck, keep us updated!
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