The human brain is not designed to be a calculator. It is designed to be efficient.
Every day, your brain makes thousands of decisions automatically:
- Recognizing faces
- Estimating distance
- Interpreting tone
- Predicting outcomes
To do this quickly, it relies on heuristics—mental shortcuts that usually work well enough.
The problem is that math requires precision, not approximation. And when we apply shortcuts to precise problems, errors creep in.
When faced with a “simple” math problem, the brain often:
- Skims instead of reads carefully
- Assumes familiar patterns
- Answers based on intuition rather than logic
That’s how mistakes happen.
