Things have been rather serious around the old Shatner Chatner as of late, and while I don’t at all mind being more reflective, I do want to assure old readers of this newsletter that I still know how to have a good time. I don’t intend to make a joke of innumeracy here; I understand why math is important and I respect her greatly, like a dowager empress. I just wish the broader world knew the moral toll math takes upon the fevered workings of my brain before making demands of me.
But...it's not 4. In the absence of parentheses, you do multiplication and division before you do addition and subtraction, so it's (2x8)-(4/3) = 16-1.333333 = 14.666667
So a lot of people intuitively approach math this way, and this is kind of how they teach it now (via the much-maligned common core) and I firmly believe that if I had been taught this way - some actually processes and rigor around the intuitive approach - I might be able to do math now.
Danny, I just want you to know I do arithmetic in *exactly* this way and I went on to get a degree in architecture from a university that prides itself on forcing all its architecture students to take the same essential engineering courses as the actual _engineering majors_ for the first three years.
What I am saying is, you could be an engineer with these maths.
17x15 stumped me, I must say. I did 5x7 which is of course 35, as previously discussed, then did 10x10, but twice because... there's two of them? Anyway that's 200 so 200+35 = 235. I do not know where they other 25 went.
But...it's not 4. In the absence of parentheses, you do multiplication and division before you do addition and subtraction, so it's (2x8)-(4/3) = 16-1.333333 = 14.666667
So a lot of people intuitively approach math this way, and this is kind of how they teach it now (via the much-maligned common core) and I firmly believe that if I had been taught this way - some actually processes and rigor around the intuitive approach - I might be able to do math now.
Danny, I just want you to know I do arithmetic in *exactly* this way and I went on to get a degree in architecture from a university that prides itself on forcing all its architecture students to take the same essential engineering courses as the actual _engineering majors_ for the first three years.
What I am saying is, you could be an engineer with these maths.
TBH, this is exactly what I thought being married to a teacher would be like as a kid.
17x15 stumped me, I must say. I did 5x7 which is of course 35, as previously discussed, then did 10x10, but twice because... there's two of them? Anyway that's 200 so 200+35 = 235. I do not know where they other 25 went.