If you don’t know your basic multiplications by second or third grade, someone has cheated you. Every seven-year old should be able to really master them. It’s just that our society makes wussie excuses, like, “Well, he has ADD, you know…” [...]
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To check multiplication of single digits by longer numbers with playing cards: We’re going to use what I call “numbers crunching” to check. That is the same as using the nines-remainders. You do know how to get the nines-remainder of a number, don’t you? It’s very simple, but it takes a bit of explaining. It [...]
Original Photo by Norsehorse Edited by Brian Ah, I love it when readers beat me to the punch! The comments to the original post pretty much sum up the paradox and it’s solution very well. Khaled’s and Mark’s comments illustrate perfectly one of the things I wanted to point out about this puzzle. That point is: Just [...] I just read an interesting and valuable post by a concerned parent at “Mindless Math Mutterings” (which are anything but). I like that blogger’s thoughtful posts about education.
This particular post was about becoming and expert with math “facts.”
I have one observation that I feel has been terminally left out of this discussion, though:
Although the basic [...] Just had a great evening mulching and edging our apple tree. I ran out of mulch and ground paper, but I can get more tomorrow. As I worked, I used a catch (see last post) to collect my thoughts. The one I used is my favorite – it’s a mnemonic device. I used the [...] I was out mulching our apple tree in the front yard, when some thoughts came to me. One of them was that I can see how gardening can be such great contemplative avocation. I’m not a gardener, and have never been very good at things like that, but I can weed, I can mulch, [...] “Just the facts” is worthless unless you have a way to process and understand those facts. The “tables” and “charts” don’t teach anything about understanding. Some people learn with them. Fine. But not everyone does, and that is fine, too. The people who seem to learn best don’t rely on them, though. [...] Have you ever heard of Hintikka’s Paradox? In a nutshell, it’s about, “Is it immoral to ask someone to do something that can’t be done?” It’s so easy to say, “Just memorize it.” That’s the cry of people who want you to learn your “math facts.” But do they ever teach a child how to memorize? [...] … a kiss is but a kiss. But on the other hand, a number can be many things. And there are many ways to remember numbers. In lesson 3 of “Eating Math For Breakfast” you’ll learn a very basic but effective way to memorize a string of digits in order to do more math mentally. Eventually Math [...] |
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