blue.” Similarly, number 3 was reddish pink and the number 88 “kind of a purple.” Quizzed again months later, Cecil assigned the same colors to the same numbers. Chronological relationships appear in our minds on a number line, the days of the week, the months in the year. Imagery is our sensory systems’ way of making the abstract real. It is a means to experience math.
Concept Imagery
While imaging numerals is important to mathematical computation, another aspect of imagery is equally important: concept imagery. Understanding, problem solving and computing in mathematics require another form of imagery–the ability to process the gestalt (the whole). Sometimes children or adults can visualize the numerals, the parts, but cannot bring those parts to a whole, just as they can sometimes visualize individual words but