Comment on Cheers Bro
lime@feddit.nu 3 days agoit’s a different kind of understanding though. also, vocabulary in school is always presented in context, while mathematics usually isn’t, save for contrived examples, because you can’t gradually introduce stuff the same as with language.
like, i never got an intuition for division. i have to brute-force it every time. during school i would ask for help and nobody else seemed to get it either.
Eatspancakes84@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I think your example with the multiplication tables is a great one. It is important for students to have a understanding of what multiplication is both as a building block of more complex math, and because multiplication is one of the most practical skills we learn in school. Having said that, rote learning of multiplication tables is also a useful skill. By learning the multiplication tables you free up cognitive resources when learning something more complex.
lime@feddit.nu 3 days ago
i don’t know about that, i would prefer to build an intuition. i know people who simply have the entire thing memorized and “look up” the answer when prompted. which of course completely breaks down if you introduce an operand higher than 12.
Eatspancakes84@lemmy.world 3 days ago
You need both. Take 1718. Your understanding of multiplication should tell you that this equals 1010+107+108+8*7. Now your rote learning will allow you to calculate this quickly as 100+70+80+56=306.
lime@feddit.nu 3 days ago
you’ll need to escape the asterisks:
\*and no, my rote learning has not prepared me for that. nothing like that was ever presented to me. i went from multiplication tables to factorisation and never mentally connected the two. as a result i can’t do factorisation in my head at all, despite doing 80% of a masters in engineering.