Maths felt manageable at O-level but became confusing at A-level, with fewer clear right-or-wrong answers. The speaker expected objective certainty and missed straightforward methods like times tables. They had memorized times tables early, including a “quick trick” for the nine times table, and believed nine was easy. An analysis of primary school times-table answers found that items involving nine were most often wrong. The speaker notes that the school standards minister Nick Gibb declined to attempt 8x9 on television when national multiplication tests were introduced in 2018. A hand-based method is then described for calculating 8x9 by folding a finger and counting remaining digits.
"As early as the first week of the A-level course, however, it became abundantly clear that the subject was quite beyond me. I simply couldn't make head or tail of what the teacher was on about. Looking around at the rest of the class quietly getting on with it, I remember wondering if there had been some primer course over the summer that everyone but me had attended. I just didn't get it."
"From my maths I wanted certainty, objective truth, which as far as I could see wasn't part of it any more. There were enough grey areas in my other subjects English and history. Where were the times tables, for example? I'd nailed those good and proper at a very early age. In ascending order of difficulty I would rate them as follows: two, 10, five, 11, three, four, six, eight, seven and 12."
"For this reason, I was fascinated to read that in an analysis of times tables answers by primary school children, it was ones that involved the number nine that were most often wrong. They're not the only ones. When the then school standards minister Nick Gibb announced the rollout of national multiplication tests in 2018, he refused to attempt 8x9 on ITV's Good Morning Britain. What's the matter with everyone? Nines are easy! If you kind of cheat, like me."
"What you do is this. Hold your hands up, palms facing you. If it's 8x9 you're interested in, just fold down the eighth digit from the left, which will be the middle finger of your right hand. Now count the number of digits still standing to the left of the one you've folded"
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]