Cursive/Script Writing

[Miss Chicken]

You simple have to multiply the single numbers in the rows by the single numbers in the column and put the results down in the boxes.

Then you simply add up the numbers on each diagonal.

 

[Miss Chicken]

Someone's going to need to explain it to me, because I cannot figure out what the hell is going on there.

3x8 is 24
3x7 is 21
3x2 is 06

4x8 is 32
4x7 is 28
4x2 is 08

2 is, well, 2.
4+8+3 is 15 (the one carries over to the next column)
2+1+2+8+1 (carried over) = 14 (one carries over to next column)
2+6+1 (carried over) is 9.

9452

Pretty much they're multipying each of the single digit numbers and stacking them in the boxes.
Then they're multiplying the answers in diagonals (!) to get the final result.

No, you add the numbers on the diagonals (which you actually did in your answer).

 

[Trekker4747]

no, you add the numbers on the diagonals.

Syntax/typographical mistake, not a mathematical one, thanks, corrected.

 

[Miss Chicken]

I think it is an easier way to do multiplication especially if you already have the boxes drawn up (and I assume that school kids do have printed multiplication sheets, at least while they are young?)

Edited to add a You Tube video explaining it

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoXJA-9WzNI&feature=related[/yt]

 

[Trekker4747]

Just strikes me as a bit needlessly comples with having to draw boxes, moving numbers around, drawling lines, keeping things within the right boxes, knowing where to move the remainders, etc, etc, etc.

It's one of the reasons why in HS science was, much to my teacher's "delight", not a fan of drawing a box to keep track of units, etc. I could do it all in my head and had little problem doing it. I mean if you get a problem like:

_232
x685

You can just do it straight out like that and keep track of all of the units your self. You use this goofy other method you've got to redraw the problem, draw the silly assed boxes, make sure they're square(ish), draw the diagonal lines, make sure you put the right numbers in the right places, etc. Just seems to me like it's just making things more complex than it needs to be. The whole "save the 1 for later" thing just seemed silly. Instead of just carrying it over.

Look at the problem, just multiply it!

 

[SVD]

I learned my math in the 90's and I never learned to multiply like THAT!

Wow, this thread went off topic!

 

[B.J.]

I don't have any problem with doing things different as long as it's easier and it works for the students. The problem is when the kids ask their parents for help doing something like this, and the parents have no idea what's going on! This actually happened to me recently - my son was asking for help doing division, and I started into the explanation, and he stopped me and said that he had to do it this other way. I had no clue what to do, but fortunately my wife is a teacher and was able to help him.

 

[CorporalClegg]

That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen...

 

[SeerSGB]

I think it is an easier way to do multiplication especially if you already have the boxes drawn up (and I assume that school kids do have printed multiplication sheets, at least while they are young?)

Edited to add a You Tube video explaining it

Am I the only one that wants to snipe that damn crab...maybe toss him in a pot with some butter and lemon?

What?! New math brings out the Cartoon Homicide in me.

 

[Mike Farley]

I look at some students work and wonder if we are seeing a transition in communication. It is not uncommon for a student to do all their notes (and sometimes classwork) in texting format.

I've had classes where Prof's have sent email to the class saying they won't accept essays that include texting lingo like "lol."



First, to use texting lingo in an essay should be an automatic disqualification from university, because you are retarded. But what academic essay would require you to use "lol" in the first place!?!

One of my classes handed in its essays a couple weeks ago, and the Prof sent out an email teaching people how to break up paragraphs because she had been receiving too many papers that were one huge 20 page chunk of single spaced text!!! What, what, whaaaaat? More than one of these? Thankfully she said she would fail any papers that were written that way.

*facepalm* What is this world coming to?

This is actually-- around here-- a big debate among some homeschoolers: Teach "old" English ( ugh) or teach l33t/txt speak to get the kiddies ready for the real world. I know of at least one family that is teaching their kids only net speak and only typing-- no handwriting, calculator no basic math first.

Hopefully those kids will enjoy their long careers in the burger flipping industry.

 

[Holdfast]

While I'm on Math for second...

Most of us learned multiplication using the traditional stack method or:

278
x34
1112
834
9452

Here is what kids are taught to do today....

http://virtuouschildren.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/lattice2.png


Yep, that is crystal clear and little chance of a screwup...


Quite frankly, Numbers have not changed recently, why the hell do we need to change what has worked well for thousands of years?

Holy shit, that's insane. I think I get what you have to do, but man, it took me more than a few minutes to work it out. And drawing a box to do such a simple math problem? Madness... humans are not computers, we don't need a rigid computer-friendly way of doing maths to cope with this sort of simple sum.

Now, I can see how it might just make some advanced mathematics simpler (I can see that if you think in this nutty way, matrices and the like might be more intuitively obvious), but frankly most people will never need to do that sort of thing and for simple maths problems the normal way of solving is so much quicker.

 

[Miss Chicken]

I was able to multiply a 4 digit number by another 4 digit number much quicker using this new method than I was able to do it by the older method, even allowing for the time it took to draw the box. If I had paper already printed into boxes (like I suspect young school children do) it would have been even quicker.

 

[RoJoHen]

2 is, well, 2.
4+8+3 is 15 (the one carries over to the next column)
2+1+2+8+1 (carried over) = 14 (one carries over to next column)
2+6+1 (carried over) is 9.
.

Ah. This is the part that as screwing me up. I could not figure out where the hell those brown numbers were coming from!

 

[Vanyel]

When I write math problems I use block print.


Thought I might try to put us back on course.

 

[SeerSGB]

When I write math problems I use block print.


Thought I might try to put us back on course.

Block and graphing paper for me. Though to be fair, I was taught to use graphing paper for most note taking anyway.

 

[Trekker4747]

2 is, well, 2.
4+8+3 is 15 (the one carries over to the next column)
2+1+2+8+1 (carried over) = 14 (one carries over to next column)
2+6+1 (carried over) is 9.
.

Ah. This is the part that as screwing me up. I could not figure out where the hell those brown numbers were coming from!

Yeah, that hung me up for a while too which I think shows the flaw in the system. If someone can't look at the problem and pretty much instantly know how it's being solved then the system isn't very good. It took me a few minutes to figure it all out and I could still see plenty of room for confusion, numbers ending up where they're not supposed to go, etc.

And, as I said, baring a piece of paper with the problem already lined up like that it seems to me it'd be a pain in the ass to draw out the box, line up the numbers and all of that correctly than to just multiply by the way most of us were likely taught in school.

It does seem that this "lattice" way of doing things has been around for something like 800 years so it's hardly "new" (perhaps, though, it's "newer" than the block way we were all taught) but the fact I've never seen or heard of it before gives me doubt to how popular or accepted it is.

I guess, in theory, teaching kids to do it like this isn't bad so much as they're also taught to do it the "standard" way and allowed to choose which way to do it from them on out. Teaching them just this way of doing it strikes me as teaching them how to use a Dvorak keyboard only to send them out in a world filled with QWERTY Keyboards.

Now, anyone want to talk about subtracting by adding?

 

[RoJoHen]

Now, anyone want to talk about subtracting by adding?

This was demonstrated to me once, but I don't remember how it works. I do remember thinking it was a waste of time.

 

[Trekker4747]

Now, anyone want to talk about subtracting by adding?

This was demonstrated to me once, but I don't remember how it works. I do remember thinking it was a waste of time.

1. Find the "complement" to the number your subtracting. (658 in this case.) The "complement" is the number needed to make that number 10, 100, or, in this case, 1000.

You do this by finding the number you need to make the right number a 10 and the following numbers a nine. (Don't worry about carrying digits.)

2 Now add this complement to the number you were subtracting from and simply lop off the far-left 1 and (of course) ignore any zeros. (Or you would subtract one fromt he far-left number if your addition makes it a number greater than one.)

 

[RoJoHen]

Yeah...I don't like that.

 

[Miss Chicken]

What about Russian Peasant Multiplication. It is good for people who can't remember their times table because all you need is to be able to divide and multiply by two, and to add.

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B70n1t5heTM[/yt]