I'm working on writing a literary review for my grad school class and as I was stumbling through research I found a statement that suggested that some students miss basic math literary skills because they are too young to handle these skills when they are introduced in school initially. Basically, spring babies may fair worse because their brains aren't prepared for the material when it's introduced, and the problem is further compiled because by the time they are, we've assumed them to know 'these math skills' already and therefore they never truly learn it.
As I type that out, I see some natural flaws with the theory, but I figured what better way to test it than a 'perfectly' scientific survey on the internet.
Anyway I got 94 responses, which seemed decent and here are the average 'math ability scores' for each group.
While the average for fall students was higher than average for spring students, which fits the theory that brain age matters, there are other observations to be made. Summer (old for grade), was much lower than Summer (young for grade). I wonder if that's because if that's because Summer (young for grade) students are often considered advanced, and Summer (old for grade) students may be students who were 'held back', whether or not those presumptions were fair they could affect one's math confidence, which was basically what the survey measured. Also, Winter (any) was by far the highest. Winter was also not an option on the original survey, which makes me think that the sorts of people who want a more detailed answer on a survey are the sorts of people with high confidence in math.
When I have time, I may flesh out some of these findings with a more refined survey, that considers more factors.
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