Daily living computational skills: the correct answer is not always the exact one

BACKGROUND. Exact computation is the most popular and the latest acquired calculation skill, while arithmetic estimation (e.g., 28+17 is < or > 50?) and magnitude estimation (e.g., How long is a high-speed train?) emerged earlier and follow different developmental trajectories. However, even though their ecological relevance their underlying mechanisms remain under investigated. Moreover, despite what is stated in educational and clinical guidelines, mastery of these skills in ecological context is largely neglected in school curricula as well as in the clinical assessment. Hence, our interest in exploring individual differences in estimation and approximation skills in the general population to provide new insight for assessment of daily-living impact of dyscalculia in young adults. METHODS. In an exploratory study of a large sample of adults, exact computation skills (e.g., 34+8?), approximate computation skills (e.g., 250+531? 760 or 870), and estimation of ecological magnitudes (e.g., ‘How much does a bicycle weigh?’) are investigated to unveil their interdependency within interindividual variability. RESULTS. We expect high interindividual variability in non-exact calculation tasks predicted by field of study, leisure-activities and type of profession, and relatively independence between exact and approximate computation. TAKE-HOME MESSAGE. Daily living computational skills are largely based on formally untrained non-scholastic abilities.