Counting on your Fingers

Did you learn to do math by counting on your fingers?  The conventional wisdom is that finger counting is just a crutch that students should use until they better understand the underlying concepts of number theory, but a new study suggests that visual representations may be the key for helping students intuitively grasp mathematical concepts.  Visual representations have been shown to help struggling students in the classroom and can even the playing field in a way that focusing solely on number theory does not.