The New Math

[Jimmy Higgins]

Yeah, you hear it from parents, complaining about how math is taught. This is generally a complaint by people who don't understand math well. In general, when my daughter is doing homework, I see some of the new methods. In general, they are teaching children the fundamental methods that will allow them to do math in their head, not on paper... like an engineer or mathematician.

But every once in a while, there is something I don't like. There was a box chart that was trying to teach fundamentals of pre-algebra, I think, but the charts weren't to scale, and my daughter was having a problem digesting it. Heck, it took me time to figure out what they were trying to do. They were doing a number of things wrong. They were using arbitrary letters for variables instead of an x which can immediately indicate to the student it is a variable and not a misprint. The bigger issue was the scale of the charts, they were all the same, making it much more difficult for a student to understand that there was a numerical significance to the chart.

I'm not losing sleep over it, but it was one of the newer things that I've seen I haven't liked. I usually add a note for the teacher about it. I mean they did the darn number lines forever and now they are going to toss scale out the window? That is silly!

The multiplication is all visual with boxes, which I can appreciate, but often I see quicker ways to solve it, but I think the kids need the experience of slogging through the numbers first so that is second nature. I think the New Math is pretty good. Of course, teaching math isn't cookie cutter and some see things differently and different methods might work better for other kids.

 

[steve_bank]

I heard we were being taught 'the new math' in 8th grade in the 60s.

As I remember it was about notation and presentation. Basics of set notation.

2nd grade was about wrote learning and a lot of practice multiplying, adding, subtracting, and multiplying on paper. Adding lists of numbers quickly.

I don't remember being taught metal math tricks for calculating. My 1-8th grade math definitely was the foundation for my becoming an engineer. Being able to do fast calculations on paper without thinking about it, before calculators.

It is interesting that Bill Gates said computers should not be used below a certain grade level.

 

[Jarhyn]

The new math seems like a mechanism to avoid teaching students like me (or you, Steve!) the mechanisms of math and induction into an eventual understanding of set theory.

To be fair, I never learned fast calculations. I learned only cogitation and a few mnemonics to remember certain squares and products.

Even so, I've solved a number of historic puzzles of prime number theory without really looking for any hints or prior discussions.

I wonder that our math might be a bit better first taught that way, towards that model of "student who wants to understand, not just "do"", and filter the students who succeed at that or show promise at it out and then throw the rest at whatever bullshit works to teach "most people most of what they need".

I'm fairly certain that if you gave me a keyboard in 3rd grade and gave me enough tools to be dangerous with it, I would have been understanding multiplication much earlier.

Now I understand multiplication of natural numbers well enough to do it in binary, manually or automatically by calculator! Hooray~

 

[Tigers!]

Now I understand multiplication of natural numbers well enough to do it in binary, manually or automatically by calculator! Hooray~

Show off.

 

[Jarhyn]

Now I understand multiplication of natural numbers well enough to do it in binary, manually or automatically by calculator! Hooray~

Show off.

No*...I'm a software engineer with a focus on systems architecture. I just really like discreet math and number theory.

*And yes, sometimes I like to show off. It occasionally gets me laid.

 

[steve_bank]

I tried to learn binary multiplication, but it was a bit too much for me....

 

[Jarhyn]

I tried to learn binary multiplication, but it was a bit too much for me....

It came down to learning that n*2 is a shift, and it's all just n*2

 

[steve_bank]

I tried to learn binary multiplication, but it was a bit too much for me....

It came down to learning that n*2 is a shift, and it's all just n*2

A joke, binary digits,,a bit too much.

Yes, shift, multiply bit by bit, and add. There is a little more to it. For an 8x8 bit multiply the result is 16 bits. Then there is dealing with signed and decimal numbers. That leads to generalized floating point numbers.

Computer Digital Arithmetic

All math operations on a digital computer reduce to binary operation. The number 123.456 has an integer and fractional part. The integr part is easy to see in binary. A simple binary count. Decimal numbers a re represented by muliples of the least sugnificant digit or lsb. For any number of...

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