Why I’m building an AI math tutor for dyscalculia — and grounding it in 30 years of ITS research
When I started this research I expected dyscalculia to be a niche condition — something a handful of children had, easily addressed with extra practice. The numbers don’t support that. Roughly 5–7% of school-age children have dyscalculia: a specific learning difficulty with number sense that is neurological in origin, persistent across development, and largely invisible in standard classroom assessments.
It’s not “bad at maths.” A child with dyscalculia might have strong reading comprehension, solid spatial reasoning, and consistently fail to grasp that 9 comes before 10. The difficulty is specific, categorical, and resistant to the kind of general maths instruction classrooms provide. Standard adaptive apps — the ones with stars and progress bars — don’t help much because they adapt difficulty without adapting to the mechanism of the difficulty. A child who confuses 51 for 15 (digit reversal) needs something different from a child who skips borrowing. Treating both as “got it wrong, try again” misses the point.
This is the gap NumPath is designed to study. Not to solve — to study, rigorously, in a randomised controlled trial.
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Educational games to help dyscalculic students progress in mathematics
Recent research in cognitive neuroscience demonstrates that the playful approach stimulates brain circuits different from those engaged by classical teaching. This alternative method allows dyscalculic students to develop their mathematical skills while preserving their self-confidence and intrinsic motivation.
In this comprehensive article, we will explore in depth how educational games can revolutionize mathematics learning for dyscalculic students, offering concrete strategies, adapted tools, and methods proven by experts in special education.
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open-source dyscalculia screening tool
Dr Rakesh Sengupta, Assistant Professor, Psychology, SIAS, has co-developed DyscalcBattery, an open-source cognitive screening tool designed for dyscalculia screening and numerosity perception research.
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One of the best parts about having dyscalculia is……
One of the best parts about having dyscalculia is that It makes me a wildly generous tipper, because when the check comes I always panic about getting the number wrong and leaving too little and in my brain 50% is way easier to calculate than 25%
follow the discussion HERE