Poll of the Day > What is your opinion of "Common Core" Math?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Out of laziness, I won't say much about what the "Common Core" is or what it aims to accomplish. Personally, I think it is great that educators are being pushed to think about how to teach their students the conceptual or creative side of math. I'm open to your stories or opinions.
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Really awful and pointless.
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I don't know it since I'm from a real country.
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I thought they were doing it here now, but haven't heard any of my friends complaining, so... must just be a US-dumbing-down tactic.
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I think most people don't like it because it was not how they were taught, so they think it is more difficult. Teaching people to think about math in a different way is not such a bad thing. I don't necessarily think it should only be taught one way, but multiple to give students the ability to learn in the way that works for them.

Honestly, the way common core works is kind of how I always have done math in my head, and I always excelled in math courses where I know a lot of people struggle.

I dont even know what it is

But its Trumps fault
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I don't know enough about the details to comment on anything specific about it, but the fundamental idea of getting away from the more traditional methods of teaching math isn't inherently a bad one, since many people struggle with those (even without getting into formal dysnumeria). What is a bad idea is to simply switch all math curricula to whatever new idea you come up with, because then those that learn better with traditional methods get left out in the cold. The only right course of action with curricula is to accept that there's no one right course of action when it comes to teaching, and that means the idea of mandating a single new curriculum at a federal level is stupid.

Alternative teaching approaches are a good thing, but only if they're treated as alternatives, rather than being the only option. Teachers should be familiar with a variety of methods and curricula and be able to apply them as they see fit. That doesn't necessarily mesh with standardized tests, so governments looking for better outcomes don't like it, but it's a better approach for raising students that understand as much math as they'll need to for their chosen field.

I don't have one.
I am a single 30 year old man, why would I have an opinion on this?
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I don't know much about myself but I'm curious if and what impact it'll start showing a decade or three down the road.
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Judgmenl posted...

I don't have one.
I am a single 30 year old man, why would I have an opinion on this?

Because presumably you're going to be in a relatively senior software engineering position in 15-20 years' time, and therefore have a vested interest in ensuring that the current generation grows up to offer a broad selection of competent programmers for you to hire. People who don't understand math tend not to become competent programmers.

Judgmenl posted...

I don't have one.
I am a single 30 year old man, why would I have an opinion on this?

Well you have opinions on a bunch of other weird shit
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It's REALLY effective for helping with mental math and should be taught in conjunction with the "standard" format.

Anyone who doesn't see advantages to it hasn't used it for long enough and/or didn't understand it. That being said, it has diasdvantages too, but isn't that like the case with anything in life?
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I don't really know what it is - i just don't like it 'cuz it's new and different :V
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_AdjI_ posted...

Judgmenl posted...

I don't have one.
I am a single 30 year old man, why would I have an opinion on this?

Because presumably you're going to be in a relatively senior software engineering position in 15-20 years' time, and therefore have a vested interest in ensuring that the current generation grows up to offer a broad selection of competent programmers for you to hire. People who don't understand math tend not to become competent programmers.

The problem is that people who know math well tend to learn math by themselves.
I was never one of those people. Absolutely awful at math.
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As a non American, maybe show some examples of common core?
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As an American, maybe show some examples of common core?
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Okay, so like 12 x 14 seems a little difficult to do in your head, right?

Separate 14 into 10 and 4

Now multiply 12 x 10 (120)

Multiply 12 x 4 (48)

Add together your two results (120 + 48)

And you get 168.

Much easier than trying to line it all up in your head and mental math it using the classic approach.

Counterpoint being that it's faster and easier to do on paper "normally" rather than breaking it all down.
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^
what? i did stuff like that on my own in elementary school. i remember a teacher saying "well what if you forget to do the other part?"

how is this new?
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Unnecessary, too difficult, and terrible. It needs to go.
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I have no idea. without actually doing it, it seems like it would be better off at helping kids solve problems, but I dont know.

Ive seen the odd image posted by people who cant handle it because its different than what they're used to, but I dont know if its actually terrible.

Krazy_Kirby posted...

^
what? i did stuff like that on my own in elementary school. i remember a teacher saying "well what if you forget to do the other part?"

how is this new?

It's "new" in the sense that it's now part of curriculum in a noticeable amount of school districts these days.
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We really don't need to be teaching it to our kids, as opposed to basic math that totally can and will be used, even if they don't think about it much in later years. Common core doesn't seem like it'll help with every day functions, and making decisions big or small through daily life.
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The concept is fine. The way they teach it can be needlessly complicated. I've seen some stupid amount of work expected for stuff like 10* 4.
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GanglyKhan posted...

Okay, so like 12 x 14 seems a little difficult to do in your head, right?

Separate 14 into 10 and 4

Now multiply 12 x 10 (120)

Multiply 12 x 4 (48)

Add together your two results (120 + 48)

And you get 168.

Much easier than trying to line it all up in your head and mental math it using the classic approach.

Counterpoint being that it's faster and easier to do on paper "normally" rather than breaking it all down.

12x14 is 144 + 24
Aka 168

This is not something that grade school teaches and isn't a skill 90% of the population can comprehend. The ability to solve problems comes with experience. That experience is done by solving problems, not any kind of rote memorization.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vetg7vWitTU" data-time="&start=75
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GanglyKhan posted...

Okay, so like 12 x 14 seems a little difficult to do in your head, right?

Separate 14 into 10 and 4

Now multiply 12 x 10 (120)

Multiply 12 x 4 (48)

Add together your two results (120 + 48)

And you get 168.

Much easier than trying to line it all up in your head and mental math it using the classic approach.

Counterpoint being that it's faster and easier to do on paper "normally" rather than breaking it all down.

This is how I've done math in my head since high school tbh
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Doing math in your head is kind of pointless nowadays, that is what calculators are for. I mean yea you should know your addition and multiplication tables and what those systems actually do, but getting into long addition/multiplication can all be done quicker by computers. It is like trying to teach handwriting, everything is done on keyboards anyways so what is the point?

Take the effort you would use to teach the basics and apply it to doing more complex problems. Kids should be doing differential equations by the time they reach middle school.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxK_nA2iVXw" data-time="
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GanglyKhan posted...

Okay, so like 12 x 14 seems a little difficult to do in your head, right?

Separate 14 into 10 and 4

Now multiply 12 x 10 (120)

Multiply 12 x 4 (48)

Add together your two results (120 + 48)

And you get 168.

Much easier than trying to line it all up in your head and mental math it using the classic approach.

Counterpoint being that it's faster and easier to do on paper "normally" rather than breaking it all down.

A combination of this, memorizing multiplication tables, and doing standard multiplication written out on paper is basically how I learned to do math, and that was in the late 1980s.


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I wasn't taught it, so I don't really have one.

GanglyKhan posted...

Okay, so like 12 x 14 seems a little difficult to do in your head, right?

Not really. 14 x 10 = 140. 14 x 2 = 28. 140 + 28 = 168. That takes a few seconds tops.

GanglyKhan posted...

Separate 14 into 10 and 4

Now multiply 12 x 10 (120)

Multiply 12 x 4 (48)

Add together your two results (120 + 48)

And you get 168.

Much easier than trying to line it all up in your head and mental math it using the classic approach.

Counterpoint being that it's faster and easier to do on paper "normally" rather than breaking it all down.

Oh, so its just literally how I've been doing basic arithmetic in my head my entire life without being taught to.

Gotcha.
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PMarth2002 posted...

Not really. 14 x 10 = 140 + 14 x 2 = 28. 140 + 28 = 168. That takes a few seconds tops.

Right, cause you know how to use it haha

I should have posted "seems hard to do in your head using the standard method for it."
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Keep in mind arithmetic is basically nothing when it comes to a high level math course. There's very little in common between multiplication and differential equations.
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it seems like it's designed for people who don't find math intuitive, at the expense of people that do
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Someone tell me how it is different from normal math
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Kids suck at math. Why do they suck at math? Because nobody knows how to do math the same way. My generation sucked at math because our parents didn't understand what the textbooks were asking us to do. Our kids suck at math because we don't understand what they textbooks are telling our kids to do. Common core not only makes things needlessly more complicated by forcing one-size-fits-all simplifications onto diverse students with diverse needs, but it also discourages learning through conventional means (especially synethesia, one of the easiest ways children become mathematical geniuses). It also completely obliterates the repetition factor that previous generations relied on to cement mathematical concepts. A kid is never going to learn times tables, for example, without repetition.
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OK, I can give one example of how Common Core is affecting a topic you might have learned from high school.

Do you remember using something called the FOIL method to multiply (x + 4)*(x + 9), for example? Well I think that "FOIL" has heavily fallen out of favor. The reason why Common Core practice would encourage textbook publishers and teachers to drop it is because it's liable to become a one-trick pony that wouldn't apply to similar problems like (x - 2 + sqrt(2))*(x - 2 - sqrt(2)). Instead, teachers are trying to convey that this kind of multiplication requires using the Distributive Property.
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jramirez23 posted...

Instead, teachers are trying to convey that this kind of multiplication requires using the Distributive Property.

hmmm, this is actually the opposite of what I said. that's a better thing to learn than FOIL, but I can see how FOIL would be tempting as a quick trick that requires zero understanding.
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Dikitain posted...

Doing math in your head is kind of pointless nowadays, that is what calculators are for. I mean yea you should know your addition and multiplication tables and what those systems actually do, but getting into long addition/multiplication can all be done quicker by computers.

The actual computation is much faster, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's faster to use computers.
Even with calculators on phones, you still have to take your phone out, unlock it, open the calculator, and input the numbers in order to take advantage of its ability to process the arithmetic near-instantly. For casual, everyday math, the more you can handle quickly in your head, the less time you have to spend setting up a computer to do it for you, and that's potentially a major time-saver. Ideally, one should only need a calculator for more complex stuff.

I don't think this will be useful in the long run as it teaches a method of doing math that depends on a base 10 system. It's base 10 normative!

In the 12x14 example kids should know that it's (4+10)(2+10) which is 8+40+20+100, or 168
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If math was Hex or base 8 it would be easier.
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Yellow posted...

If math was Hex or base 8 it would be easier.

Except like no.
All arithmetic would be easier (and even that is arguable, how would one deal with floating point numbers? Would you have to use IEEE 754 for everything?)

But calculus would still be a nightmare as it is completely disjoint from arithmetic.
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GanglyKhan posted...

It's REALLY effective for helping with mental math and should be taught in conjunction with the "standard" format.

Anyone who doesn't see advantages to it hasn't used it for long enough and/or didn't understand it. That being said, it has diasdvantages too, but isn't that like the case with anything in life?

My brother-in-law explained to me in that it's meant to help students think and not just memorize how to solve problems which I think is a good thing. Having gone up to Calculus AB in high school in the old format, I can agree with him as most stuff was just me memorizing how to solve a problem or memorizing a similar problem to solve the current one I have and not necessarily thinking of how to solve it. That being said, I do think it might be a little excessive for anything but colleges, Master programs, etc.
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Judgmenl posted...

Yellow posted...

If math was Hex or base 8 it would be easier.

Except like no.
All arithmetic would be easier (and even that is arguable, how would one deal with floating point numbers? Would you have to use IEEE 754 for everything?)

But calculus would still be a nightmare as it is completely disjoint from arithmetic.

3A,000,000 = 3.A * 10^7

A CPU converts it to binary anyway. A CPU doesn't need or want base-10 for anything, why should we?

Literally everything would be just fine and carry over. The binary representation of 30 is exactly the same as 1E. Everything you do on a computer is constantly made harder due to the fact that you have to take into account the conversion between the arbitrary human base-10 and sensible hex math.

Convert 432543 to binary. You have to divide it in half and shit. Now convert F54DE2.

2 0010
E 1110
D 1101
4 0100
5 0101
F 1111

How many bytes long is F54DE2? 3.
How many bytes long is 432543? Google it.
How many bytes are in a gigabyte? Again, Google it. Someone mixed in decimal for marketing reasons.

If humanity could switch on a dime from old habits, I would enforce hexadecimal metric. Hexidecimal is real, base-10 is an imaginary human invention. Why wouldn't you want a base you can divide by two without getting 25, 12.5, 6.25 and ugly numbers like that?

If I could change it, maybe we could just go by the alphabet.

ABCD EFGH IJKL MNOP

Base x^2 is the language of computers and music. Quarter note, 8th note. Because humans are flawed they get accustomed to the first thing they come up with.
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Yellow posted...

Base x^2 is the language of computers

It's the language of computers because we made it that way.
It's not some natural thing that God birthed into the universe, we did so because Ternary computers are utter s*** and nobody uses them.

CPUs and microprocessors just take inputs and make them outputs based on operand and opcode, all of which you can look up on a table.
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And to be fair, I don't even like the term byte.

What's the significance of 2^8? Why did it jump from 1 to 8? What happened to 2^2? Or 2^4? It's all made way too confusing.

Why is it bit -> byte -> kilobyte?

1, 8, 3E8???
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Yellow posted...

And to be fair, I don't even like the term byte.

What's the significance of 2^8? Why did it jump from 1 to 8? What happened to 2^2? Or 2^4? It's all made way too confusing.

Why is it bit -> byte -> kilobyte?

1, 8, 3E8???

Have you ever heard of a nibble?
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shadowsword87 posted...

Yellow posted...

Base x^2 is the language of computers

It's the language of computers because we made it that way.
It's not some natural thing that God birthed into the universe, we did so because Ternary computers are utter s*** and nobody uses them.

CPUs and microprocessors just take inputs and make them outputs based on operand and opcode, all of which you can look up on a table.

The more you can factor something into something that resembles a pattern, the more resources your mind has to solve problems. There is no pattern to the number 10 and it shouldn't be at the base of every math equation we do.

The only real example I can come up with right now is dividing a number in half (multiple times), which is objectively easier in hex.

jramirez23 posted...

Have you ever heard of a nibble?

Yes. I had to Google it a year ago when writing my NES emulator because the documentation referenced something as "the first nibble of the byte"
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Yellow posted...

There is no pattern to the number 10 and it shouldn't be at the base of every math equation we do.

Human beings have 10 fingers.
That's why.
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If what my niece is doing is common core it's stupid. If it's what my step sister did then eh, I did it a few times before anyone knew what the fuck common core was.Personallyey should touch on multiple methods and let kids pick what works for them.
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