I'm curious...are people who are good at learning kanji and enjoy it also good at math? Anyone know of any studies? What about people on this forum?

john555 Wrote:I'm curious...are people who are good at learning kanji and enjoy it also good at math? Anyone know of any studies? What about people on this forum?

What do you do for living, john555?

Inny Jan Wrote:

john555 Wrote:I'm curious...are people who are good at learning kanji and enjoy it also good at math? Anyone know of any studies? What about people on this forum?

What do you do for living, john555?

Management...financial accounting. Lots of spreadsheets, complex issues and calculations. I often wonder if my love of complex mathematical issues explains the fun I have when I study kanji. I sometimes joke to people "you can see the beauty of the algebra in this" when going over spreadsheets.

People who are good at learning are good at learning both Kanji and math, yes.

Stansfield123 Wrote:People who are good at learning are good at learning both Kanji and math, yes.

Yeah, this was my first thought. If there is indeed a correlation between the two, it probably has no deep meaning.

john555 Wrote:I'm curious...are people who are good at learning kanji and enjoy it also good at math? Anyone know of any studies? What about people on this forum?

I'll think of your question for 5 seconds and then post whatever comes to my mind as the absolute true, because obviously anything I can't understand in 5 seconds can not exist.


This is the closest I could find in regards to john555's question, spending a couple minutes searching on Google. It clearly isn't exactly what he wanted, but it's a hint that the subject might have been studied by researchers already:

Possible effects of English-Chinese language differences on the processing of mathematical text: A review

Quote:ABSTRACT When comparing Chinese and English language, large differences in orthography, syntax, semantics, and phonetics are found.
These differences may have consequences in the processing of mathematical text, yet little consideration is given to them
when the mathematical abilities of students from these different cultures are compared. This paper reviews the differences
between English and Mandarin Chinese language, evaluates current research, discusses the possible consequences for processing
mathematical text in both languages, and outlines future research possibilities.

I've never read any research but I can speak from my own experience. I've always sucked at maths (hard) despite my repeated attempts to understand and like it. It's just that comprehension of abstract mathematical concepts has always been a challenge for me on some level and I could never grasp a lot of them naturally, like some people do. Kanji, on the other hand, are a different story. They have always appealed to me, I've always loved them and never really had problems remembering them. So for me there seems to be no connection.

I'm not sure, but I'm terrible at math and I'm terrible at memorizing things so there's one data point.

Stansfield123 Wrote:People who are good at learning are good at learning both Kanji and math, yes.

I think there's many different different kinds of learning and success in one area doesn't necessarily correlate with success in other areas. Using myself as an example, I'm quite good with learning concepts, but I'm bad with math, language and memorizing facts. The existence of savants would be an extreme example.

Interrelated, no doubt.

I was once dumped in Hilbert Hotel, but instead of numbers there were kanji on the doors. It was HELL incarnate, I tell you, I was totally lost.

I'm a mathematician and I understand mathematics as a extremely precise language and culture. The language is being developed to to ask and answer questions in a extremely precise way. The mathematical culture more or less help you to determine what deserves to be questioned and answered. So, the way I see things, if you have good language abilities, and high tolerance to frustration, you can have some advantages when learning and using languages. But, this is just my opinion!

About research relating mathematics, and intelligence, to language, well there is this thing called Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis that says that language influence and may determines you intellectual abilities. If you want to read more about that, I think you can start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

My limited and biased point of view is that this hypothesis is a very controversial and probably will never be scientifically tested. It is extremely hard test it because you can't really separate the language from its culture. And, even if it was possible, it would be necessary to see how humans isolated from other cultures grow up, what seems unethical.

Well, from my basic knowledge of psychology (PSY101 and some documentaries), I'd say that it's difficult to conclude whether language and math are related with our current understanding of the brain.
There is a very specific area of the brain that deals with language and a separate region that deals with basic math (known because defects in these regions result in difficulties performing relevant tasks). Whether that applies to more abstract mathematics or not... I don't know.

To me, mathematics is a logical field (at least arithmetic, algebra, and calculus are), so it doesn't seem like anything other than the symbols of math would be treated like language. But that's just an uneducated assumption.

As for kanji specifically... I guess if you only consider the symbols, they could be processed similarly as visual stimuli, but I don't think that's really what's being asked.

Sebastian Wrote:I'll think of your question for 5 seconds and then post whatever comes to my mind as the absolute true, because obviously anything I can't understand in 5 seconds can not exist.

Oh, get over yourself. People are perfectly capable of giving an off-the-cuff speculative answer while still fully understanding that it's just for fun and there could be a much more substantial exploration of the question elsewhere. But, since we didn't explicitly and annoyingly state that, you're clearly smarter than us for posting an insult and a half-related study.