The Brazilian Maths on the Streets Project was an attempt by researchers to understand the way people learn to solve basic mathematical problems without formal education. This research focused on the similarities and differences between school mathematics and street mathematics by attempting to establish connections between what people learned in school and what they used in their every day lives to conduct their businesses.

Five children, four boys and one girl, were chosen for the study. These children were 9 to 15 years old and had reached a level of schooling from the 1st to the 8th grade. Four were attending school at the time of the study. All were from families with very little income. One had attended school for 1 year, two for 3 years, one for 4 years, one for 8 years. All but the one who only finished first grade had received formal education in mathematical operations and word problems.

Procedure

The study was conducted in two parts: the informal and formal. In the informal study, the researchers approached children who were selling in the market or on the street. Posing as customers, they asked the children a series of questions during the course of a normal sales transaction. The mathematical tasks they gave to the children were embedded in conversations about the daily activities that were typical of their jobs so that they might describe the ways they actually calculate with numbers when they are working. Responses to these questions were either tape recorded or written down by the researcher. These questions became the "test questions" that were later used in the formal study.

Informal Study

The researcher conducted the informal test by first requesting a price for goods. After receiving the answer, the researcher would then ask the child how he came up with the answer. The following example reflects a transaction between the researcher and a 12-year-old coconut vendor in the third grade.

Question: "How much is one coconut?

Reply: "Thirty-five"

Question: "I'd like ten. How much is that?

Reply: (Pause) Three will be 105; with three more, that will be 210. (Pause) I need four more. That is ; (Pause) 315 ; I think it is 350.

This child solved the problem correctly without using the methods taught in school. If in school, the only correct answer to this problem would have been achieved by placing a zero to the right of the number 35.

Formal Study

The formal study was conducted either in the same place as the informal study or in the child's home. The items on the test were chosen based on the problems that the child had solved correctly during the informal test. These items were presented either as a mathematical computation or as a word problem. To more closely replicate the school setting, the child was asked to take the formal test using paper and pencil.

Two variations were introduced in the formal test. Some items were presented as the inverse of the problems solved in the informal test. As an example, if in the informal test, the child was presented with the problem "500 minus 385", the formal test would pose "385 plus 115". Others problems were presented using a different decimal value. In this case, 40 cruzeiros could appear as 40 centavos. (In Brazilian currency, one cruzeiros equals 100 centavos.)