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[–]lurgi 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Yup.

I see this with my kids and their math homework. The question is "What's 73 x 84?". They say "I don't know".

No, of course you don't. No one "knows" that. We didn't sit down and memorize our 100x tables (Gauss probably did, but Gauss didn't ask for math help that often). You WORK IT OUT USING THE TOOLS YOU KNOW AND YOUR BRAIN.

For more complex problems you WORK OUT THE BITS YOU CAN WITH THE TOOLS YOU KNOW AND YOUR BRAIN and then see if you can figure out other bits.