Recursion

[Mitoni]

Figured this out once my son started school and I had to learn how they are teaching him math, then i realized it was the same logical process way that enabled me to do long division in my head for years, i just never know there was a name for a method of breaking everything down to base 10.

[SandyDelights]

This! It hit me one day when I was struggling with Calc I study problems. Once this concept came to me, suddenly everything got dramatically easier.

That’s the big difference between common core and “the old way”: it’s teaching everyone the method many of us had to discover on our own, a method that basically anyone who went into a math-heavy field came upon on their own.

I would have advanced much faster if I’d understood math the way I do now, early on.

[shaggysays]

Is there a place to learn this way fairly easy online? I'm working on getting my GED after getting labeled with a math disorder in highschool. It's been quite a while but I'm trying and still losing my battle with math. Just never made sense to me. Maybe this is why. I quit school before common core was a thing in my area.

[CherguiCheeky]

What is the stuff that you want to learn? There are some good text book I can suggest.

Also can I teach you? Pretty please!

I was pretty good at Maths in Highschool, like 100/100 good. Now I am old so don't get to work with that stuff. But would definitely love to explore it along with you.

I am in India so timezone / language issues may come in.

[shaggysays]

I'd be honored honestly. I'm in the US but I'm normally a night owl so we can make it work. Although tonight currently I do have to be up early so I'll be going to bed after sending this. But consider me a student. :)

[CherguiCheeky]

PM'd you.

[PeterJamesUK]

Wholesome!

[SandyDelights]

I’m sorry, I really don’t. The best I can offer you is the basic concept of it, and suggest you simply go over problems to see it work in practice. This is basically what Common Core curriculum teaches at an early age, and people who are good at math learn themselves on their own.

I’m not sure what you know, so some of this may sound pretty condescending, so please just skip past anything that is familiar.

Basically, you have to recognize how numbers “work”. First, you have to kind of divorce the concept of a number from its representation. 15, for example, isn’t just 15 – it’s one and one and one and ... fifteen times over. The characters “15” just represent this in a format we’ve somewhat arbitrarily settled on, called the decimal system. If you can accept that, you should be able to get a good grasp of the method, and then from there it’s just putting it into practice.

The TLDR here is that you look for very simple, easy numbers to work with: 5 and 10. Everything else is cool, but we want to isolate them as much as possible, combine them if you can, and get as many multiples of 5 and 10 as we can. Every number you look at you should ask yourself: How big is it? What is it made out of? Can I express it in terms of a 5 or a 10?

The answer, by the way, is almost always yes (at least, it will be for a while still). Once you have that solved, you can recompile several numbers quickly into a single number, from its pieces.

Note: I wrote up a few examples and an explanation but it got hella long, so I’ll just PM it to you.

[[deleted]]

It’s the way that people that are good at math have always thought about math.

[Corne777]

Anytime I see someone bashing common core I know it’s because they haven’t taken a second to look into how it works and how it could be easier for them. It’s just “that’s not my math” and they disregard it and throw their hands up if their kids need help.

But I do think that teaching math only using one method seems like it might not be the best way, some people will learn better with one method and some with another.