|
||||||
|
For more information about the names of the different symbols for division, you can check out Names for the Division Sign at MathMojo.com Recently a reader wrote in with the following question: Hi. I enjoyed discovering your website about math mojo. Do you by chance know how to create the long division symbol [...] You may have read other posts about this long division shortcut at Math Mojo. Long division shortcut Part 1 Long division shortcut Part 2 The main page to go to to learn the basics of the shortcut is: Long Division Shortcut at Mathmojo.com At that page, someone asked: I have attempted this question using your [...] You’re taught, “You can’t divide by zero.” But are you taught why? Adequately? Nah. That’s one of the fundamental goobers of elementary school. They give you rules to memorize, but even the teachers are unclear of why those rules are rules. [...]
original photo from Richard Masoner Edited by Brian Not sure what got me thinking about this today, but I was musing about the commutative property, and how it applies to addition and multiplication. (Yeah, it was a pretty boring morning.) Specifically, I was thinking about the word, “augend”. The augend of an [...] Recently an interested reader (a teacher) wrote in a great question. I thought you might be interested in it, too. Here it is: I ran across your website of mathematical terms. Is there a specific name for the division bracket? We are introducing 3rd graders to the vocabulary and symbols. Thank you. Haven’t you ever [...] A few posts ago, I offered some tips about how to check large division problems without having to multiply huge divisors and quotients to get even huger dividends. One of the drawbacks to using the “crunch” method, which I described, is that it is not 100% accurate. Often, people who need to defend [...] We’ve been talking about using factors to make long-division problems easier, sometimes being able to turn them into a manageable sequence of short-division problems, in which no paper and pencil (and certainly no calculators!) are needed. Want to try another one? How about 962/52 ? Well, they’re both even, so that’s [...] In the last post we looked at the problem of 926/18, and we simplified it to 463/9, so we could make it a short division problem. What if the problem had been 927/18? Both numbers are not even this time, so it is not readily apparent if they have common factors. If you know how [...] (Is that title an oxymoron?) Imagine you have to do this division: 926/18 How would you do it? Would you rewrite it with that funny division symbol (“division bracket,” or “right parenthesis followed by a vinculum over the dividend”)? Would you use a calculator? (Please say “no” to that!) After you rewrote it, would [...] They way we are usually taught to check division problems in school is unnecessarily complex. There is a better way. I always wondered why, after thousands of years of mathematics, schools generally haven’t figured that out. But I’d rather try solving the Riemann zeta-hypothesis than figure out why schools teach the way they do. [...] |
 |
||||
|
Copyright Magic and Learning; 2012 - All Rights Reserved |
||||||
