After listing functional constraints on what numbers in the brain must do, I sketch the two's complement fixed-point representation of numbers because it has stood the test of time and because it illustrates the non-obvious ways in which an effective coding scheme may operate. I briefly consider its neurobiological implementation. It is easier to imagine its implementation at the cell-intrinsic molecular level, with thermodynamically stable, volumetrically minimal polynucleotides encoding the remembered numbers, than at the circuit level, with plastic synapses encoding them.This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'The origins of numerical abilities'.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 7. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 12 April 2023.
All research outputs
#7,198,336
of 34,320,268 outputs
Outputs from Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
#3,838
of 7,751 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#110,699
of 496,490 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
#61
of 108 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,320,268 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 78th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 7,751 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 27.4. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 50% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 496,490 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 77% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 108 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 43rd percentile – i.e., 43% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
