Re: Explaining the foundations of math

From: William Elliot (marsh_at_privacy.net)
Date: 08/31/04 

Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2004 07:00:39 -0700

On Tue, 31 Aug 2004, Dement wrote:
> On 31 Aug 2004, William Elliot wrote:
> >
> >Big Brother Bush will not publicly thank little Brother Jeb
> >for corrupt Florida elections, neither for 2000 nor for 2004.
> >It'd give thinking students the false notion that election fraud
> > can and has happen to US.
> >
> >But less I stray too far off topic, what are they doing in grade
> >school, are they still teaching numbers, ie arithmetic? Or are
> >youngsters spared such demeaning demoralization by being taught
> >to use hand calculators instead?
>
> There is actually a math book (forgot the name) which recommends
> that kids use calculators right off the bat. The point is is
> that many of them already have a nice and intuitive feel for
> numbers which they've aquired just by playing around. However,
> when they get to elementary school they begin learning "rules"
> based on performing some simple (but sometimes counterintuitive)
> algorithms which have little to do with the math itself.

I agree, some of the rules for algebra are a nuisance and can be done
almost as easy by using simpler intuitive rules and little fuss about
remembering the correctly.

> To demonstrate the point, the author even aludes to some statistics
> showing that many kindergardners (or first graders or whatever) can
> subtract (24 - 5 = 9, etc.) faster than 2nd graders, etc. because the

Indeed, either a kindergardner or a Bush economic advisor.

> latter are too busy trying to "cross out 2 and make it a one, then, for
> some reason, write a "1" next to the "4"...etc.") while younger students
> still tend to invent (and improve on) algorithms they themselves thought
> up.
>
So second graders would get a more accurate 14?