The Way You Learned Math Is So Old School

NPR:

Your fifth-grader asks you for help with the day's math homework. The assignment: Create a "stem-and-leaf" plot of the birthdays of each student in the class and use it to determine if one month has more birthdays than the rest, and if so, which month? Do you:

a) Stare blankly

b) Google "stem-and-leaf plot"

c) Say, "Why do you need to know that?"

d) Shrug and say, "I must have been sick the day they taught that in math class."

If you're a parent of a certain age, your kids' homework can be confounding. Blame it on changes in the way children are taught math nowadays -- which can make you feel like you're not very good with numbers.

Well, our math guy, Keith Devlin, is very good at math, and he tells Weekend Edition Saturday host Scott Simon that there's a reason elementary schools are teaching arithmetic in a new way.

"That's largely to reflect the different needs of society," he says. "No one ever in their real life anymore needs to -- and in most cases never does -- do the calculations themselves."

Posted by Jim Zellmer at March 5, 2011 10:49 AM
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