Maths presents a problem to most people. Being good at maths is a skill that many say comes to hard to them. As with so many things, the key to a lot of basic arithmetic is practice, practice, practice. It is not for nothing that so many school systems insist on rote memory learning of multiplication tables and drilling in basic adding, subtracting, multiplication and division. These skills are useful to everyone throughout life. They are a basic competence demanded by most employers for a job of any kind.

It turns out that rote learning and drilling may not be the only ways to improve your basic skills in maths. It seems that most of us are born with an innate ability to estimate quantities, amounts, rates of progress and the likely impact of the interaction of different variables of this kind. It is this ability that makes it possible for us to cope with the demands of driving a car where we are constantly estimating the impact of random variables on the road and in the traffic to guide our own decisions. We take this innate skill for granted. This may be why most people are happy to drive even though the statistics who that this is one of the most dangerous activities any of us can undertake in the daily course of life!

Our ability to reliably compare and contrast quantities, rates of progress, volumes and amounts without actually counting anything is incredibly useful. You use this skill without thinking when you decide which queue to join when waiting to pay at a till in a shop or when queuing at a road toll. Most people can find the midpoint of a line with a fair degree of accuracy by eye.

Most can say which of two fairly equivalent heaped amounts (of food or goods or whatever) is the larger. Now it seems that we can use this ability to estimate in fairly complex ways. Most of us can say whether one set of items is larger than the sum of two smaller sets of the same items.

This ability allows us to cut through a certain amount of complexity to make on-the-spot decisions about what may be important to us in the area immediately around us. In short, estimating with accuracy seems to be one of our survival skills.

Practising your estimating skills is a good thing to do. The more you practice, the more you hone the accuracy and speed with which you can estimate. Getting children to play quantity-based guessing games helps develop the accuracy of estimating early. More importantly, guessing games of these kinds seem to help develop ability in basic maths too. It seems that the basis on which we make our guesses is aligned to the logic which underpins all mathematical calculations. Guessing seems to help develop the building blocks in the brain for this type of logic.

The important thing here is that guessing of this kind requires no formal ability to count or to explain. So playing games of this sort can help give children a good start in maths before they understand the concepts of numbers and while they are learning to speak. For adults with a fear of maths, guessing and estimating may offer a new pathway to enjoying maths skills.

It’s anyone’s guess how this will translate into new business and learning opportunities. But it is a fair estimate that entrepreneurs and educators will seize on guessing games to create profitable new business aimed at toddlers and adults alike.