[BITList] Why is maths education a huge political issue in America?- BBC News

[HUGH]

Mike,

Thank God I got my education before the fidgets took over.  I learned the basics of arithmetic by rote, since at that time we hadn't been told the method was old fashioned.  Any ful kno that 4+4+1=2+3+3+1=9, etc, but why go all around the houses if all you want is the sum of 5 and 4?  By a young age we had the multiplication tables up to 12 safely stowed away, and we could extract any bit required from memory.  Some of the alternative methods proposed by that lady are as old as the hills - the history of modern maths is littered with them.  In Kincaid's DO before I went to sea there was a fashion among the young and foolish for squaring large numbers in the head.  The method needed a good memory for carry overs, and a good memory for where one was in the process.  Much easier just to write down 257x257 and do it the usual way, but that's show business.

Hugh.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.bcn.mythic-beasts.com/pipermail/bitlist/attachments/20160314/dd4feaff/attachment.html>