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March 17, 2005
Addition and multiplication
Tim's having some trouble with arithmetic at school. He ended up learning to read early, so they had him skip a grade. But he wasn't that far ahead in math even as he missed the year where they learn to add. So he still counts in order to add single-digit numbers.
Nath and I plan to use worksheets found on the web and gold stars or something equivalent to get him trained. He'll have the same problem I did. I hated multiplication tables because you have to memorize the answers. Working the answers out from basic principles takes too long, yet there's enough that you actually have to work at it for a little while. Anything longer than instantaneous was too much for my willpower.
On the other end of the spectrum is UNIX, which is like learning to read a language where the alphabet has 100,000 letters. Why don't I hate that?
Posted by Mark at March 17, 2005 08:57 PM