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Quote:

Originally Posted by Blueflare (Post 800210)

When I was a child I did arithmetic recreationally. Yeah, I really knew how to live. I also read a lot.
It's by those two activities that I ended up being (if I do say so myself) a reasonably learned person with the ability to think and know my times tables and what an allegory is.
School was utterly useless and is 85% jumping through hoops and checking boxes, 10% realising that people with authority are almost invariably useless and don't care about you, and 5% trying to remember how to do percentages and the more complex maths. What is Sin, CoSin, and all that other stuff? What is Log? I used to press those buttons on my calculator to get the right answers, but I never understood what they meant.
School really is the most spectacular waste of time and resources.

Pfft! That's nothing. Our fearless leader taught himself the meaning of the word autodidact.

:D welcome Blueflare. You are in good company here. If you have a twisted sense of humor. If you have no sense of humor you are in almost good company here.

When I was a kid I documented game results (like a detective game I had, etc) and kept records and compared.

Ha! Funny...that's pretty much what I do now.

Only without the fun and with the added Dragon Lady Boss. ;)

Welcome Blueflare! Stay a while. Want a beer?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lamplighter (Post 800113)

My G-daughter is in 3rd grade and changed schools last month.
She did not know the multiplication tables,
and was placed in a class that is learning division and estimating.

Question: how do you teach division to a child that does not know the X's-table ?

Same way you do to one who does. Unless you feel that it's not important for them to understand the real world implications of what they're doing on paper.

Quote:

We are having nightly sessions to learn the tables,

I bet that's making her really LOVE math, sounds like such fun!!! .... :rolleyes:

Quote:

mainly because
I can't stand watching her try to figure out how many times 7 goes into 42.

But it's not about you, grandpa. it's about her. go in a different room if you can't stand it. Kids need to do their own homework and make their own mistakes in their own way. The best way to help is to encourage them to write down their working so you can help them discover where they went wrong when they do.

Quote:

She was trying to add 7+7+... and almost always made a mistake.

As do kids when first learning by rote rather than experience/practice. 8*7 = 54 etc. 54's in there somewhere and 8*7 was 50somethig..... Also, it sounds like she need the addition practice if she is still making mistakes so often. Bypassing that is not doing her any favors.

Quote:

After learning most of the tables, there are still some combinations that still give her trouble,
so I have used the same approach Monster describes above...
6 sheep in 7 pens, or any silly image that will stick in her mind to simply know 6 times 7 is 42.

Not the same at all in fact. It could so easily be 8 sheep and 4 pens. there's nothing unique there. needs to be unique or it's not memorable. The image may be memorable, but the numbers, no.

Quote:

And by coincidence, I have also used HLJ's "trick" above with squares
to help trigger her memory.... e.g., how many times 7 goes into 35 must be 5.

So, rote memory, memory tricks, silly images (e.g., to remember people's names)
all help in moving on to the more important issues,
and not being held up trying to figure it out from scratch,
without wasting the most valuable resource... time.

More time is wasted when you learn just enough facts to pass the test, but not the deep understanding that you can transfer to other applications (and "save time")

Has tw taken over monster's account?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spexxvet (Post 799718)

I learned in about 1975. One had to be leery of those newfangled calculators.

That's true, and it's gotten worse.

I had to work on this picture to make it readable, but it's unchanged.

oh. em. gee.

Please. I don't want to play that game again.

:lol:

Man, when ever calculators disagree - even the same brand - what hope is there for us?

Put your hope in learning arithmetic.

It's not really possible to define "common sense",
but it is a step now included in our school's teaching process,
that was not specifically included back in my day.

My G-daughters homework includes making an "estimate"
before working out the details of the problem.
So when they get an answer, they have a way to ask
if it seems "about right" or "makes sense".
Likewise, keeping track of the "units" in so-called "word" or "story" problems
is a helpful part of getting the correct answer.

I don't know how long schools have been doing this,
but I think these are great "innovations" in beginning math,
and can be used later on with more complex problems,
to avoid stupid blunders... like misplaced decimal points, etc.
.

I learned about keeping track of units in HS, and I think it was one of the more important things I've learned. But it has made me very intolerant of people who mis-use units (like saying crazy things like kW/hr when they mean kWh). I guess that should go in the mis-used thread.

I learned about keeping track of eunuchs in HS too.

Damn man, those crazy motherfucking eunuchs, was like herding cats, amirite?

Why would you want to go around hurting cats?

You mean the bird killers?

you don't herd eunuchs, you just steer'em.

though I reckon it hurts at the moment of eunuchification.