Understanding Numbers  

We use numbers everyday, whether we are balancing our check book or listening to a weather report.  We all understand that numbers symbolize specific quantities, but do we have an intuitive understanding of those quantities?  Research in the area suggests that our intuitive understanding of what numbers symbolize is quite different from what numbers actually symbolize.  Furthermore, the CCPL has shown that our understanding of numbers depends on the format in which they are expressed.  For example, although both 0.5 and 1 in 2 symbolize the same quantity, the intuitive quantities we associate with these numbers are different.  Research on numbers is also critical to basic research in psychology.  Specifically, in many of our experiments we ask participants to provide a number to indicate, for example, their perceived risk or their perception of a stimulus.  Participants' understanding of numbers clearly bias their responses.  By identifying peoples' numerical biases, we can statistically remove their effect.