The importance of estimation in maths cannot be stressed enough. Estimating is one of the most useful maths skills we can acquire. It relates to all sorts of different areas of maths – measurement, handling data, handling money, time, space, shape, number operations. It allows us to make judgements about how much time, money, food, paint…we will need. If you are good at estimating it is a skill that you use on a daily basis in adult life – it saves time and sometimes money.
One of the best things about estimating is that we use our mathematical reasoning. There are often several ways to come to an answer, none of which is wrong. When a student comes up with an answer, we can ask them to explain, in words, their thought-process/reasoning. It encourages problem solving. Importantly, estimating allows us to check to see if our calculated answers are reasonable.Estimating often provides very rich and active maths. Why sit down and work out on a piece of paper how many beanbags you would need to fill up a bath, when you could experiment with how many beanbags it takes to fill up other things?
We asked three basic questions when trying to estimate the number of pencils we might have in a container.
- What do we have to compare this to?
- What methods could we use to estimate?
- How can we check our estimate?
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| If we could find out what "ten" looked like it was easier to estimate the rest. |
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| Counting by twos to get a group of ten. |
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