Numeracy Campaign: We should savour maths problems, writes Baroness Greenfield Again I must emphasise that there are also plenty of men who are just as good at this, and there are women, including myself again, who relish the challenge of finding the right answer. The individual will always trump gender generalisations, but I'm trying to take an overview so as to make more sense of the imbalance that we now have. Mathematics, of course, is also all about making connections, seeing patterns in relationships between symbols, and applying logical thinking. So maths should, in theory, appeal to girls as much as boys. But that is mathematics at a more rarefied level. I took pure maths at A-level and loved it. But if your maths lessons never get beyond what might be called "basic numeracy" - how to do the sort of sums we all need when we are out shopping - there is never that chance to glimpse the essential elegance of the abstract interrelationships of symbols and enjoy the intellectual fulfilment in their manipulation. In aiming for this higher ground, we can never underestimate the importance of good teaching. It is all well and good trying to dress up subjects as cool and trendy to get more pupils to take them, but that is as nothing compared to a teacher who can get young people excited not by the medium, but by the message. I was lucky at school to have an extraordinary classics teacher who did that for me. That is what inspired me to take Latin, Greek and ancient history at A-level, along with maths. If she had been teaching us spot welding, that is probably what I would have ended up doing. Jazzing up the image of a subject may make it appealing in the short term, but not sustain a true passion. And it is that excitement we have to convey to pupils. I can still remember, as a 17-year-old, how stimulating and rewarding it was to sit up late into the night trying to work out a proof, knowing there must be a solution, and finally getting there. Everyone who can should surely be helped to access that experience. I realised, too, that I was using the same skills of analysis to work things out as I was when I was tackling a Latin or Greek translation, coupled with the same awareness of intrinsic beauty. Perhaps that is what people mean when they say mathematics is a language. But there is something unique about maths. It is, I believe, no coincidence that it has often been the subject in which child prodigies excel. Think back to 1983 when Ruth Lawrence made headlines by going up to start her degree at Oxford University at the age of 12. What was her subject? Mathematics. Because higher-level maths is so abstract, there is no need to learn a whole hinterland of facts to supply a source of examples, precedents, or justifications. It doesn't require much experience of real life. Those who are comfortable with it and have agile minds can very quickly engage with the thrill of it. Yet that is both its great strength and its great weakness. If more children are going to do better at maths, they have to develop their ability to think in the un-flashy abstract terms that maths demands, and to take the time to think through and savour a problem. And yet, now, so many of them live in this literal world of screens - on computers, phones, iPods and iPads that offer them an image for everything where "what you see is what you get" and everything is literal, literally sensational, and demanding fast responses. If they over-diet on action not thought, are they actually going to enjoy a pure mental process such as mathematics?