Comment on this one goes out to the arts & humanities
KevonLooney@lemm.ee 7 months agoThis has a secondary effect of making average people incapable of estimation in their heads. Hopefully in the future people won’t be incapable of writing and art.
The entire point behind the much maligned New Math is to teach approximate solutions that you can do quickly in your head. It’s the realization that if you want an exact answer, use a calculator, but quick head estimates are still useful.
It was opposed by generations who were told to memorize multiplication tables because they wouldn’t always have a calculator available.
Well you should memorize those anyway. It’s useful all your life for easy calculation. If you want 7 items and they cost $3.50 each, it’s between $21 and $28.
I check on the calculator I have with me at all times. It’s $24.50
I calculated it in my head without memorising all the multiplication tables. I just realised that 73.5 is equal to (75+7*2)/2. And that 49/2 is equal to 40/2+9/2. Easy peasy. This is why I failed second grade math, because multiplication tables are only useful for doing operations a few seconds faster.
Yeah but that doesn’t work when you need it most on “The Price is Right”.
SanndyTheManndy@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Average people weren’t doing complex math in their head back when human calculators were a thing.
KevonLooney@lemm.ee 7 months ago
But they were estimating things. Somehow illiterate people ran marketplaces for thousands of years.