Kelsey Koonce

April 25, 2016

Math 1030
Final Project
Psychology and Mathematics

Does psychology use math? And if so, how does psychology use it? In researching and
putting together this paper as well as talking to fellow students throughout the semesters Ive
studied psychology, a lot of people believe that psychology does not use math. In fact Ive been
told by a couple of students that part of the reason they decided to major in psychology is
because it doesnt include a lot of math. Well, they couldnt be more wrong. Every single field of
psychology uses math every single day. So how does psychology use math?
Psychology is a science and as with all sciences, psychology is partially based on a
mathematical foundation. Hypotheses need to be tested, and statistical analysis provides a means
of determining whether treatments appear to be effective or not. Psychologist must have a strong
understanding of statistics to do so. Statistics allow us to make sense of and interpret a great deal
of information. Consider the volume of data you encounter in a given day. I.e. how many hours
did you sleep? Etc. Using statistics, you can organize and interpret all of this information in a
meaningful way. Statistics allow psychologist to organize data, describe data and make
inferences based on data, etc.

Psychology is a science based on research and facts from those findings. In order to
understand that research you need a good solid understanding of statistics, the scientific method
and quantitative reasoning. The public face of psychology is often represented by the therapist
and on the surface, this occupation could not seem more removed from mathematics. However,
this perception is quite misleading from the development of new therapy techniques to
evaluating the effectiveness of the techniques on implementation, it is statistical analysis that
provides the means of which conclusions can be drawn.
Statistics is the practice or science of collecting and analyzing numerical data in large
quantities, especially for the purpose of inferring proportions in a whole from those in a
representative sample google.com/statistics/definition.
Going into clinical psychology Im learning quite quickly that math is used every day. I
am constantly analyzing charts and finding differences and using mathematical problems and
procedures to find answers to behavioral questions, correct therapy treatments, and new facts that
we are constantly learning about human behavior. For my major I am required to not only take
the mathematic courses everyone for a basic degree is required but I am also required to take not
only one but two statistic courses. And that doesnt include all the other statistics and math I will
be using in my other required psychology courses.
I wanted to take it a step further and look at everything we have learned in this class and
observe just how I will be applying it to my major and future career. At the beginning of the
semester we learned about sets and relationships between sets. You have your subset, disjoint,
and overlapping sets. All of these will be used in psychology to display data and analyze
statistical findings. We also learned about absolute and relative change. This is something I will
use a lot to analyze and infer about techniques, therapy, and so many other things. We then

learned about distribution, mean, median, and mode. These will be used to display findings,
analyze and compare information and findings, put together data and observe techniques, etc.
Histograms, peaks and skewness will be used to display data and findings along with variation,
the five number summary, standard deviation and normal distribution. These will also be used to
observe techniques and therapy choices. The exponential function will be used every day to
make analyzations, findings, etc. on data and techniques and treatment.
Here is one study done in psychology using quantitative reasoning and other
mathematical functions that we have learned in class this past semester. This goes through the
problem, method solution and findings and conclusions. This study also showed graphs such as
histograms and table charts that I did not include.
Objective: The study aims were to address neuropsychological functioning across
different states of bipolar illness and to determine relationships among clinical features,
neuropsychological performance, and psychosocial functioning. Method: Several domains of
cognitive function were examined in 30 depressed bipolar patients (DSM-IV criteria for major
depression, Hamilton Depression Rating Scale score 17), 34 manic or hypomanic bipolar
patients (DSM-IV criteria for manic or hypomanic episode, Young Mania Rating Scale score
12), and 44 euthymic bipolar patients (6 months of remission, Hamilton depression scale score
8, and Young Mania Rating Scale score 6). The comparison group consisted of 30 healthy
subjects without history of neurological or psychiatric disorders. A neuropsychological battery
assessed executive function, attention, and verbal and visual memory. Results: The three groups
showed cognitive dysfunction in verbal memory and frontal executive tasks in relation to the
comparison group. Low neuropsychological performance was associated with poor functional

outcome. Impairment of verbal memory was related to the duration of illness and the numbers of
previous manic episodes, hospitalizations, and suicide attempts.
Conclusions: A poorer performance was observed in all bipolar groups regarding
executive function and verbal memory in relation to the healthy comparison subjects. These
cognitive difficulties, especially related to verbal memory, may help explain the impairment
regarding daily functioning, even during remission. Further studies should focus on testing,
whether optimizing prophylactic pharmacological treatment and psychoeducation might reduce
cognitive impairment, and whether bipolar patients would benefit from neuropsychological
rehabilitation in order to reduce the impact of cognitive impairment in their overall functioning.
(Am J Psychiatry 2004; 161:262270) Using independent and dependent variables along with
charts and graphs and finding differences etc. they were able to find their findings and
conclusions.
Not only does psychology use math, but it has helped develop how math is taught and
learned. And developed itself. Psychology is the study of human behavior. It also studies the
human brain and its functions. In studying that at such great a depth psychologist learn how
humans learn best. A mathematician learns math differently than say the average student. Their
brain processes things different and has developed to process mathematic problems differently.
But when youre an elementary teacher or high school teacher, etc. what is the best method to
teach your students something so new and challenging for them? This is where psychology
comes into play. By knowing the brain so well and its development, psychologists can figure out
the best way to process new information and to teach it. An example of this comes from Max
Wertheimer who addressed the issue of productive thinking verses reproductive thinking. A
productive thinker grasps the structural relations in a given problem or situation. A reproductive

person fails to see relations among subparts and simply repeats learned responses to individual
subparts. Productive thinking can be encouraged in mathematic classrooms by avoiding where
possible the giving of ready-made steps. He used an example of children who had been taught
the standard rule and had difficulty when presented with an upside down parallelogram. Because
they didnt understand the derivation of the rule, they couldnt apply it to this new situation. Had
they been taught productive thinking they would have been able to grasp the problem and solve it
without any complications and a full understanding of the equation. Ive seen this issue many
times in my life having good teachers and poor teachers. When I was taught how to productively
think about the mathematical problems I excelled at math easily. However if I had the teacher
that simply taught the rules and not the problem as a whole, I literally failed math classes.
Psychology knows how we think and can help us teach.
Every day in our lives we are constantly doing math but my major will only make
learning and understanding it fully that much more important and it will become such a bigger
part of my life.

References:
ask.com/world-view
verywell.com
psychologicalscience.org
ajp.psychiatryonline.org