doing mathematics makes use of nine basic mental
abilities
Child psychologists have
demonstrated conclusively that we are all born with
number sense
The Sumerians are the first people we know of who
used abstract numbers
3. Spatial-reasoning ability
ability to recognize shapes and to judge
distances
4. A sense of cause and effect. Much of
mathematics depends on "if this, then that"
reasoning, an abstract form of thinking about
causes and their effects.
5. The ability to construct and follow a causal
chain of facts or events. A mathematical proof
is a highly abstract version of a causal chain of
facts.
6. Algorithmic ability. This is an abstract version
of the fifth ability on this list.
7. The ability to handle abstraction
8. Logical-reasoning ability
9. Relational-reasoning ability
Much of mathematics deals
with relationships among abstract objects
clipped from: www.maa.org