this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
1035 points (95.9% liked)
memes
8761 readers
3226 users here now
Community rules
1. Be civil
No trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour
2. No politics
This is non-politics community. For political memes please go to !politicalmemes@lemmy.world
3. No recent reposts
Check for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month
4. No bots
No bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins
5. No Spam/Ads
No advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live.
Sister communities
- !tenforward@lemmy.world : Star Trek memes, chat and shitposts
- !lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world : Lemmy Shitposts, anything and everything goes.
- !linuxmemes@lemmy.world : Linux themed memes
- !comicstrips@lemmy.world : for those who love comic stories.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Examples?
We use an electronic timer. Started with adding single digit numbers. He needs to provide answers before the timer goes off. Right answer adds a dime, but wrong answers or no answer before time expires subtracts a dime. Identified the numbers he had trouble with. We play until he's taken a couple dollars from me. I always let him win a couple dollars to keep up the interest. Lowered the time until it was down to a second.
Most math is learning and applying a technique. But there is no technique or formula for adding/multiplying single digit numbers - it's all memory. That's what I did with my grandkids, and it frees them to learn the techniques without struggling with the basics.
Not to be a naysayer, but there ARE techniques for single digit multiplication and addition. In fact, it's utilizing some basic principles, like the transitive property.
You can always always breakdown mathematics into smaller bits, like 9+8=(9+1)+7=17, or 7*6=(5+2)*6=30+12=42.
You could even do counting! 1+3 => 1...2,3,4 => 4. Or 3*4 => 3,6,9,12 => 12. There's lots of shortcuts!
Aren't those all still based on basic addition and multiplication? If you don't know 2+2=4, breaking down 2*3 into 2+2+2 doesn't help.
Memorization is about speed. Knowing 3*4=12 is much faster than 3+3+3+3.
If you can't break down something, memorizing the answer only teaches you the answer to those problems. Each piece of mathematics is a building block that can be used to help understand another part. You are skipping past the part of why 2+2=4 because it seems forthright and immutable. But, memorizing that means that there may come a time when 2+2 isn't equal to 4, and without the knowledge of how to get there, could you then solve for 2*3?
This seems silly (and maybe a little abstract), but it's meant more as an example to show why knowing how to break things down could solve bigger problems later on. Learning multiple ways to solve a problem can be really helpful!
It's really just meant to show that it can be broken down, not that it is faster (because it isn't).