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Today a concerned reader took issue with what he understands my methods to be. (See comment #4 at Augends, Addends and the Commutative Law of Addition.)
Fair enough, but I think he may have misunderstood my methods.
That could, of course, be due to the way I communicate them (or miscommunicate them). First let me say that none of the algorithms (ways of solving math problems) I teach are “mine.” “Math Mojo” is the name of my attitude, not the methods. The methods have been either gleaned from better sources than me (and most are hundreds, if not thousands, of years older), or I have “re-invented” them. That is typical for most people’s alternative methods.
Now to the issue; the reader stated:
After all these years (30) of struggling to teach children math, I finally realize why it is so difficult. A brief perusal of some of the mathematical girations you go through to multiply two numbers together explains a lot of why kids are poor at math. Commutative and associative properties are more easily understood when you have the basic tools to work with without adding zeros then subtracting the number from your cousins name on your mother’s side of the family. Teach the basics by rote then progress to the more abstract. Simple to complex seems to work.
Professor Homunculus’ reply:
I’m sorry you’ve come to that conclusion. If you’ve been teaching math for 30 years, you surely have some insights. But I can’t see see how you’d say, “simple to complex” seems to work. May I ask where it seems to work? And if it does, why is it a struggle for you, and why is it so difficult? Have you been teaching with the “girations” (sic) you say I use to make it so frustrating?
I’m not quite sure I understand the logic of your position.
Continue reading Learning Multiplication by Rote is a Disease →
While surfing some of the other math blogs in the blogosphere, I ran across a post in Michael Paul Goldenberg’s Rational Mathematics Education blog.
In a recent post of his he mentions an article written by Paul Lockhart entitled, “A Mathematician’s Lament.” It was written in 2002, but has only gotten mass coverage recently, since it was [...]
Photography by Santarosa, Justin Wong and Brian. Edited by Brian
(This was meant to be posted on Monday. Sorry about the lateness).
Many of us who struggle to learn math (yes, I am one of them) suffer from assorted challenges, like ADD, procrastination, lack of focus, depression, and other things that are or aren’t nameable.
That’s no big, deal, unless we chose to make it one. Every challenge is just that, a call to step up and beat it. So we constantly seek methods, systems and other tools to help us. That’s partly what makes a challenge fun – finding new, cool things that other people never think about.
Recently I was speaking with a friend of mine. He seems to get a lot done, and I always admired that about him. I mentioned that to him, and he seems to think that he doesn’t really. At least not naturally, anyway.
Continue reading Math, Engineering Controls and Administrative Controls →
Recently I got an request to review my booklet, “Numbers Juggling – Times without the Tables.” Request came from Sol Lederman, who runs the “Wildaboutmath” blog.
I’d heard that name before, but really couldn’t remember much about Sol, so I checked out his blog to see how serious it was.
Wow, it’s a great blog, full [...]
My team-mate (my wife) and I had been stumped by a corner of the puzzle from last Friday. It was driving us nuts (who the heck is Al Leitner?). Anyway, we usually get ‘em all within a day or two, but this one was tough, so I hit the web and googled some clues. I don’t like to cheat (OK, I do, but my wife has a little more backbone than I, and she usually won’t let me look up an answer until we’ve given it a few days). [...]
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