More Important to Understand How You Got There
There was a report at the end of the BBC 10 O’Clock news tonight concerning the following question;
What is 1/8 of 32
Apparantly many adults can’t answer that question. I think I only got it because of RAM and knowing 8, 16, 32, 64, 128MB etc.
There was a quote from a Head Teacher at the end though - it’s more important to show what you’re doing rather than just get the right answer (or something to that effect - there’s no video up). It reminded me of the song New Math, by Tom Lehrer.
Del.icio.us | Technorati | Digg | SlashdotConsider the following subtraction problem, which I will put up here: 342 minus 173. Now, remember how we used to do that: three from two is nine, carry the one, and if you’re under thirty five or went to a private school you say seven from three is six, but if you’re over thirty five and went to a public school you say eight from four is six. And carry the one, so you have one hundred and sixty nine. But in the new approach, as you know, the important thing is to understand what you’re doing, rather than to get the right answer.
