Geek humor

Doctor Phibes

Math is taught as a collection of short-hand tricks that the students don't understand as anything more than black boxes that happen to work for some strange reason. Learning how to do long-hand multiplication or division is not more educational of math than learning where the Calculator app is in the app store and learning how to push the right buttons.

That depends on how it's taught. I seem to think when I learned long multiplication, the teacher used it to explain how decimal numbers worked. Admittedly, that might have had no impact on the kids who were less interested, but I remember it making me think quite a bit about it.

What I really disliked was having to memorise multiplication tables. That and the freaking Nicene Creed. They don't do that so much over here.

jon-nyc

Horace - that was true in your day. Common core math and the Singapore method it’s based on really does a good job with creating deeper understanding. That’s why parents complain so much about it.

Doctor Phibes

@jon-nyc said in Geek humor:

That’s why parents complain so much about it.

Lolz

Horace

The utility of the rote mechanics was that anybody could memorize them, and then everybody "knew math". I wonder if you run up against intellectual ability barriers in attempts to teach the ideas.

Doctor Phibes

@Horace said in Geek humor:

The utility of the rote mechanics was that anybody could memorize them, and then everybody "knew math".

I once taught a set-7 math class. Forget long-division, half of them could barely use a ruler.

jon-nyc

@Horace said in Geek humor:

The utility of the rote mechanics was that anybody could memorize them, and then everybody "knew math". I wonder if you run up against intellectual ability barriers in attempts to teach the ideas.

I think they very much do. They teach multiple methods to arrive at solutions really admiring the problem in many ways. My son has flourished with it, I’ve always thought it was a special kind of torture for the mathphobic.

Copper

My rote learning of multiplication tables has served me well over the last 60 years.

Doctor Phibes

@Copper said in Geek humor:

My rote learning of multiplication tables has served me well over the last 60 years.

So has my memorization of the Nicene Creed.

Copper

And the Pater Noster

Axtremus

Re: “rote learning of multiplication tables”

It’s really just caching for some frequently used information. Some information is more frequently needed than others, so it’s worthwhile to commit them to memory for quick access rather than to recompute or re-lookup every time the information is needed.