Do you really want this guy teaching your kids?

Enter Richard Dunne, an author and consultant who specialises in making basic maths calculations more tangible. Using paper cups to represent units, Richard asks children to model addition, subtraction, multiplication and division calculations (or

Eek!

Blackadder: You have two beans. If I give you two more beans, what do you have?
Baldrick: A casserole.

what does that make
a very small casserole

I wish they'd asked the pupils the same questions.

It breaks your heart that all these kids will never be able to understand their bets.

:^0

Lori 17 Feb 10:45
the real problem I have with it is that it's teachers who didn't know this.

A disgrace, BODMAS is the next thing you learn after being taught the basic operations

I'm not claiming it was hard, just that multiplying by ten is trivial

I wish they'd asked the pupils the same questions.

They did this was all on dispatches i think the other night, the kids just guessed numbers 12 or 6 or whatever. they were asked to explain how they got the number and they were bit sheepish :)

In engineering the answer is 14, no doubt.

However if you put it in a normal calculator I'd guess it might be actually doing:

4+2 = Y then 5*Y

which a scientific calculator will not do, it can accumulate (nest) multiple operations. The reason brackets are implemented is (partly) to alter the order of operations, if say you wish to +/- prior to * or /

I can understand why people might say 30 though, its not such a big deal but teachers thats another matter....on the other hand engineers can't spell or talk to woman.

Honest Al 17 Feb 09:22
From this week's Sunday Times;

"Primary school maths teachers are failing to attain the standard of arithmetic expected of 11-year olds, new research has claimed".

They went on to ask a few straight forward questions, and this one caused the most problem;
What is 4 + 2 x 5 ?

"Only 20% of the teachers tested for a Channel 4 television documentary were able to work out the solution of 4+2x5 = 14, NOT 30 - multipication takes priority over addition".


Is this a wind-up? Since when did multipication take priority? I make the answer 30, and will always make the answer 30. No wonder the kids today can't add up.

Would you also say that 4 + 2 ^ 2 = 36
Or would you agree that it is 8?

Moonlight 18 Feb 00:19
Division by zero is an illegal operation btw. :D

from http://www.math.utah.edu/~pa/math/0by0.html:

" The reason that the result of a division by zero is undefined is the fact that any attempt at a definition leads to a contradiction.

To begin with, how do we define division? The ratio r of two numbers a and b:
r=a/b

is that number r that satisfies
a=r*b.

Well, if b=0, i.e., we are trying to divide by zero, we have to find a number r such that
r*0=a. (1)
But
r*0=0

for all numbers r, and so unless a=0 there is no solution of equation (1).

Now you could say that r=infinity satisfies (1). That's a common way of putting things, but what's infinity? It is not a number! Why not? Because if we treated it like a number we'd run into contradictions. Ask for example what we obtain when adding a number to infinity. The common perception is that infinity plus any number is still infinity. If that's so, then
infinity = infinity+1 = infinity + 2

which would imply that 1 equals 2 if infinity was a number. That in turn would imply that all integers are equal, for example, and our whole number system would collapse. "

"Ask for example what we obtain when adding a number to infinity. The common perception is that infinity plus any number is still infinity. If that's so, then
infinity = infinity+1 = infinity + 2"

An infinite quantity of something cannot coexist with a finite quantity. Therefore adding a number to infinity is impossible (as is subtracting a number from it).

To give an example, say you construct a regular polygon with 5 sides, then with 6 sides, 7 sides etc. When you take a regular polygon with an infinite number of sides, you have a circle. You cannot add a side to a circle, to create a polygon with infinity+1 sides, nor can you take away any amount of sides to create a regular polygon with a finite number of sides.

Infinity is all encompassing. If 'everything' is contained by infinity nothing can be added to it.
Conversely nothing can be removed, as if this was possible, it could also be added again.

I can't prove any of the above, but it makes intuitive sense to me :D

Excuse my ignorance but how do you get a normal cheap calculator to give you an answer of 14 if you key in the following:

4
+
2
x
5

Not trying to be clever, but if that is how the question is written you would expect a primary school kid to follows what is in front of him/her.

get a better calculator

Ask outside the staffroom Al ;)

Not trying to be clever, but if that is how the question is written you would expect a primary school kid to follows what is in front of him/her.

definitely fishing after that one.

Q: express 0.25 as a percentage

as a percentage of what??

Wow

Either this thread is a massive wind up or the education system in the UK is horribly inadequate

Or both

Honest Al, try it on a calculator, you will see the anwser if 14.