Subitizing - Educational Applications

Educational Applications

Historically, many systems have attempted to use subitizing to identify full or partial quantities. In the twentieth century, mathematics educators started to adopt some of these systems, as reviewed in examples below, but often switched to more abstract color coding to represent quantities up to ten.

Aleister Crowley advocated subitizing in 1913 in Liber Batrachophrenoboocosmomachia, published in The Equinox. In the nineties, babies three weeks old were shown to differentiate between 1-3 objects, that is, to subitize. A more recent meta-study summarizing five different studies concluded that infants are born with an innate ability to differentiate quantities within a small range, which increases over time. By the age of seven that ability increases to 4-7 objects. Some practitioners claim that with training, children are capable of subitizing 15+ objects correctly