Stories Count

How Stories Count Works

STORIES COUNT: Narrative Approaches to Quantitative Learning recognizes that the processes of understanding important concepts and ideas, articulating them, and communicating about them are intimately connected and mutually reinforcing. The program engages, challenges, and supports people who stay on only one side of the presumed verbal/quantitative divide as well as those who are comfortable and at home in either domain.

The tales in the STORIES COUNT repertoire take audiences to inviting worlds. They present memorable characters and satisfying plots. They captivate and involve audiences. In addition, the stories are also full of math and logic. They have huge numbers—even numbers that are as big as they might ever grow. They have reliable strategies for making decisions. They have equality and variation, probabilities and certainties. They have logical patterns and tricks that get characters in and out of trouble. And sometimes they invite and sometimes they demand exploration of what it all means.

The stories engage their listeners in whatever ways it works for the listeners. Lovers of language, stories, and tales readily engage the narrative form. And as they watch the characters act and interact and the plots resolve, they “do the math”—usually without even knowing that math is what they’re doing. Those who are math-adept often recognize quantitative patterns and structures early on and then find themselves involved with the characters and events caught up in them.

The outcome is often new insight into the connections between understanding, articulating, and communicating about math, logic, and related topics and a renewed commitment to mastering both verbal and quantitative competences using STORIES COUNT: Narrative Approaches to Quantitative Learning.