Page 256 - A Mind For Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

Chapter 15: Renaissance Learning

1 Colvin 2008; Coyle 2009; Gladwell 2008.
2 Deslauriers et al. 2011; Felder et al. 1998; Hake 1998; Mitra et al. 2005; President’s Council of Advisors
on Science and Technology, 2012.
3 Ramón y Cajal 1999 [1897].
4 Kamkwamba and Mealer 2009.
5 Pert 1997, p. 33.
6 McCord 1978. See Armstrong 2012 for an extensive discussion of this and related studies. Manu Kapur
and Katerine Bielaczyc (2012) indicate that less heavy-handed guidance by instructors may result in
counterintuitive improvement in student performance.
7 Oakley et al. 2003.
8 See Armstrong 2012 and references therein.
9 Oakley 2013.

Chapter 16: Avoiding Overconfidence: The Power of Teamwork
1 Schutz 2005. “Fred” is a hypothetical amalgam of typical traits of “broad-perspective perceptual disorder
of the right hemisphere.”
2 McGilchrist 2010 provides a comprehensive description supporting the differences in hemispheric
function, while Efron 1990, although dated, provides an excellent cautionary note about problems in
hemispheric research. See also Nielsen et al. 2013; Jeff Anderson, M.D., Ph.D., who was involved in the
study, notes, “It’s absolutely true that some brain functions occur in one or the other side of the brain.
Language tends to be on the left, attention more on the right. But people don’t tend to have a stronger
left-or right-sided brain network. It seems to be determined more connection by connection” (University
of Utah Health Care Office of Public Affairs 2013).
3 McGilchrist 2010, pp. 192–194, 203.
4 Houdé and Tzourio-Mazoyer 2003. Houdé 2002, p. 341 notes, “our neuroimaging results demonstrate the
direct involvement, in neurologically intact subjects, of a right ventromedial prefrontal area in the
making of logical consciousness, that is, in what puts the mind on ‘the logical track,’ where it can
implement the instruments of deduction. . . . Hence, the right ventromedial prefrontal cortex may be the
emotional component of the brain’s error correction device. More exactly, this area may correspond to
the self-feeling device that detects the conditions under which logical reasoning errors are likely to
occur.”
5 See Stephen Christman and colleagues 2008, p. 403, who note that “the left hemisphere maintains our
current beliefs while the right hemisphere evaluates and updates those beliefs when appropriate. Belief
evaluation is thus dependent on interhemispheric interaction.”
6 Ramachandran 1999, p. 136.
7 Gazzaniga 2000; Gazzaniga et al. 1996.
8 Feynman 1985, p. 341. Originally given in his 1974 Caltech commencement address.
9 Feynman 1985, pp. 132–133.
10 As Alan Baddeley and colleagues (2009, pp. 148–149) note: “We are not lacking in ways of defending
ourselves against challenges to our self-esteem. We readily accept praise but tend to be skeptical of
criticism, often attributing criticism to prejudice on the part of the critic. We are inclined to take credit
for success when it occurs but deny responsibility for failure. If this stratagem fails, we are rather good
at selectively forgetting failure and remembering success and praise.” (References omitted.) 11