In-house newsletter

Thanks to everyone who chimed in on the homework blegging on Barbara McClintock. You managed to explain some very complex ideas in ways that made them accessible to my seventh-grade friend, for which she asked me to say thanks.

The girls' school actually has an excellent "homework helper" Web site for parents. It's a very nice resource if, for example, you're trying to help your kids with factoring polynomials and you're a bit fuzzy on the subject, not having factored one yourself for the past 15 years.

That homework helper site is a good first step at using the Web to supplement what schools can achieve, but it's still a kind of limited, Web-as-broadcast-medium approach. The next step schools should explore would be to harness the hive-mind powers of parents (and older students) through blogs and message boards. The school district's site, for example, doesn't have much to say on the subject of gene mobility, but I'd guess there are parents (or siblings, or older students) in the district who could offer help on that, or any, subject.

We could have used something like that back when I was in elementary school, when we first learned to do long division. Most of our parents hadn't learned this, so Dougie and I wound up doing a bit of tutoring for our classmates parents so that they could, in turn, help their kids with the New Math (obligatory Tom Lehrer link). What I've never understood was how our parents' generation did arithmetic like long division before the new math.

Anyway, seeing schools beginning to use the Web in this way is encouraging -- much more encouraging than what has been, up until now, the primary use of the Web in schools, i.e., students' use of Google as a tool for plagiarism, followed (a bit too slowly) by teachers' use of Google as a tool against plagiarism.

One more lesson w/r/t homework blegging: I should keep future requests for such help in discrete posts so that the comments threads will be somewhat less likely to contain unrelated flamewars and/or cruelly funny and disconcerting bits of meta-fiction. (Disconcerting, for me at least, because no one likes to picture themselves as Roy Stalin.)

Comments

[Spherical Time]

Actually, I think you're wrong that the teachers were slow to adapt to papers on the web. At the college I attended, I was accidentally privy to the fact that two of my classmates plagiarized papers. One was caught by googling, and the other by a computer program that stored papers from previous years and located a frat guy passing off a paper given to another professor two years earlier.

Of course, most of the time, it's just easier to hire someone to write and original paper for you. It might cost a bit, but you don't have to worry about getting caught for plagiarism. That's where craigslist comes in.

[DaveW]

Well, maybe you don't have to worry about getting caught for plagiarism if you hire someone to write the paper for you. Then again... (the story starts with "Laura K. Krishna is a Plagiarist" down near the bottom of the page.)

[Dahne]

Silly Fred! Message boards create mutual communication, and Bog and all his angels meant that to be a oneway street! No one wants to hear what children/teenagers think! Listen to them and they'll start thinking they're people.

(Why yes, I am one of those kids who had a very hard time ignoring a practice of belittlement so ingrained that people are honestly surprised when you suggest it might be a problem. Incidentally, also one of those for whom getting out of compulsory education lead to a surprising surge of Not Wanting To Kill Myself All The Time. Whenever I talk about it too much I start thinking in phrases like "systematic dehumanization" and then I have to go lie down for a while.)

Anyway, on a slightly less residual rageful note, I've seen what happens when you give teachers technology. You either get it used as pen and paper that crashes a lot and you have to use floppy disks for, or as a practical application in the lesson of how just because you can doesn't mean you should. I've had quite a few classes where Powerpoint presentations were mandatory. At least one teacher made sure to show us how to include sounds effects and animations. And encouraged us to use them.

Not to mention the research projects. Oh, lord. They send you out into the wilds of the 22% of the internet that isn't porn or jokes about Chuck Norris and expect you to get a correct figure for how many American soldiers died during the Bataan Death March. This was in the days before Wikipedia, so all you could do was run a search (I don't even think Google was a standard back then) and hope that the page with dates for the Holocaust you dig up don't happen to have come from a site run by white supremacists.

(Happened to me once. It was an innocuous-looking page with just dates and numbers and stuff, maybe een accurate ones, I don't remember...until you looked at the rest of the site. Fortunately I figured that out before the citation went into the paper.)

[alfgifu]

"Sorry sir, I had my homework on this disk but it fell in the road/the river/my lunch and got run over/soaked/eaten before I could print it out on the school computers."

I think that was the main use my year group got out of school technology. One friend had a pre-smashed disk that made an appearance about once a week. It never failed.

[Rosina]

"Sorry sir, I had my homework on this disk but it fell in the road/the river/my lunch and got run over/soaked/eaten before I could print it out on the school computers."

TNT lost it.

[Rozzen]

""Sorry sir, I had my homework on this disk but it fell in the road/the river/my lunch and got run over/soaked/eaten before I could print it out on the school computers."

"What, didn't you get my paper ? But I sent it yesterday ! Oh dear I must've misspelled your email address, haha stupid me"

[cjmr]

Before long division they did something called 'casting out nines'. I have no clue how it actually worked, though, and my grandma's math book that had it in did not survive my mom's flooded basement 5 years ago. (I remember idly flipping through it when I was a kid, but since it wasn't for the year when they learned 'casting out nines' it didn't show how to do it, just indicated that that was the method you should use for this section of problems.)

[Rosina]

The method of long division I remember (and I was always brilliant at Maths and useless at arithmetic, so my answers were wrong, but my method was to die for).

And I've forgotten the correct terms, but let's call them the divisor and the divisee.

1) Write down the sum upside down, so that the answer will go on the line above the divisee - the divisor is to the left.

1) You'll be glad you did this in the long run. Note down the multiples of the divisor from 1 (the easy one) to 9.

2) Look at the first 2 or 3 (or more) digits. Which of the multiples do they fall between? Write the lower of the two multipliers (0 to 9) above the last of your selected number (that's above the line) and the multiple below them. Take the multiple from your 3 numbers, then drop down the next number from the divisee to the end of your subtraction total (so what was the unit becomes the tens, and the 'new' number is the unit).

3. Repeat. If when you've dropped down the next number it's less than the divisor, then write 0 on the line above, and drop down another number. Until you reach the end of your divisee. At this point if you want, you can keep adding a 0 to your subtraction total, and go to decimal places, or make the final subtraction total into a fraction.

[mmack]

Fred,

For all our help,

"We want our TWO DOLLARS!"

[mmack]

Before long division they did something called 'casting out nines'

cjmr, I can see it now:

"Begone nines, and take thou foul temptress zero with thee! For naught may be divisible by naught."

[ako]

When I was in fourth grade, we got introduced to long division with the Division Rap. It was dorky enough to look ridiculous to a roomful of fourth graders, and was really embarrassing to repeat, but annoyingly, it worked. Divide, multiply, subtract, and bring down.

Of course they did that tedious thing of making us do long divisions on problems that were far too easy for long division (really, short division should cover you for stuff like 50 divided by 5), so it took me ages to get it. I'm no good at pointless steps; they actually make tasks more difficult for me. It wasn't until we got proper numbers with decimal answers that I got the hang of working the steps. I spent forever going, "But I've done the problem! Why are there three more steps?"

[Geds]

cruelly funny and disconcerting bits of meta-fiction. (Disconcerting, for me at least, because no one likes to picture themselves as Roy Stalin.)

Does it make me a horrible person that my main response to this is mostly, "Hey, Fred noticed me. And mentioned that thing I did in a post!"

Ah, well, we kid because we love.

That and the fact that the reason it's funny (at least to me) is precisely because I was trying to come up with, like, the anti-Fred for the story. I mean, really, who other than Scott himself would actually assume Fred is the villain?

[Geds]

Hmm. That last paragraph is completely unnecessary. Somebody remind me to get some sleep at some point in the future. I think my brain stopped working.

[mmack]

Fred,

Better off Roy than Joe, n'est-ce pas?

[Richard Hershberger]

My division tale of woe is that in fourth grade my class had a self-paced math program. As I recall, it was really very good. At the beginning of the program you took a test to determine where you started, so you weren't rehashing stuff you already knew.

When I took that test I understood what division was, but no one had taught me how to do it. I breezed through the addition, subtraction, and multiplication parts of the test, but when I got to the division I could only do those problems solvable by brute force.

It was immediately obvious to the teacher what the problem was, so she sat me down and showed me how to do long division. I picked it up right away. I still had to do the worksheets associated with the problems I missed on the test, that I saw the justice of this (and now see the practicality of practising this new skill). But the teacher made me do the worksheets associated with the problems I had solved through brute force, which seemed a grave injustice.

People nowadays seem inordinately impressed by anyone who can actually do simple arithmetic. I see people whipping out the calculator to divide a number by ten. *sigh*

[Geds]

People nowadays seem inordinately impressed by anyone who can actually do simple arithmetic. I see people whipping out the calculator to divide a number by ten. *sigh*

Yeah. I do most of my math in my head and can usually get even the complicated stuff to within .5 or so. I caulculated my gas mileage out once on something really simple to the order of putting about 12 gallons in after having driven somewhere around 350 miles.* I knew I was right around 29 MPG, the actual math came out to, like, 28.9 or something.

The friend I was with was really impressed and she insists I calculate my gas mileage whenever she happens to be around and I'm filling up the tank.

*Yeah, I know the number I used don't add up. But it was something like going 345 miles on 11.7 gallons and I know that I was within .2 or so on the math. I've also been driving the same car for 3.5 years and calculating my gas mileage every time I fill up, so it's almost second nature to me by now to do it in my head and get close.

[mmack]

Re: New Math and Long Division

Rosina, Richard, and Geds, didn't you all learn your goesintas?

950/5. Lesse, 5 goesinta 9 once, remainder 4, 5 goesinta 45 9 times . . .

[ako]

Look what I found! The secret incantation for casting out nines!

[Rozzen]

Interesting. It's basically a check of what the remainder is when you divide the number by 9. It's probably not something they did before long division though, given that it's just a method for checking your result.

I would think long division has been in use since the Renaissance or before, wouldn't it ?

[Jesurgislac]

Rosina: The method of long division I remember (and I was always brilliant at Maths and useless at arithmetic, so my answers were wrong, but my method was to die for).

I remember one of my teachers in primary school explaining to me how to do long division by this method. I remember it because, after she'd explained, I sat - nearly in tears - staring at a set of sums she had given me, completely unable to understand how I should proceed. After an interminable time (probably about ten minutes) and feeling horribly guilty and wrong, I just did the sums by the method of long division I already understood, got the right answers, and handed in my jotter for marking closed, so that the teacher wouldn't notice right away that I hadn't done the sums the way I was supposed to. (I remember being asked, a few days later, why I hadn't used the method given, and when I didn't answer but must have looked horribly guilt-stricken, the teacher said hastily that it didn't matter, she'd just thought it would be easier.)

mmack: Rosina, Richard, and Geds, didn't you all learn your goesintas?

950/5. Lesse, 5 goesinta 9 once, remainder 4, 5 goesinta 45 9 times . . .

Yeah, that's the method I learned and still use, either in my head or on a scrap of paper if I'm tired/drunk/numbers too big...

[Geds]

That's interesting. I clicked on the link to the description of "Modular Arithmetic" and realized that's basically what I use to figure out gas mileage. And I've never heard of that concept before, nor had I learned it in my fancy book-learnin' back in high school.

Although I think I work it backwards. My car generally gets around 29-30 MPG. The lowest I've ever seen it get was 24, the highest 33. I usually put about 12 gallons in when I fill up. I know that 360 miles on 12 gallons is 30 MPG, while 300 miles on 12 is 25 MPG. Everything between that is a 12-point threshold. When I fill up I never actually drive exactly 360 miles on exactly 12 gallons, but knowing the thresholds tells me how to factor for things like driving 345 miles on 11 gallons. And I consciously do it that way. I don't try to figure out what 345/11.8 is. I just know that it's about 29 MPG because of how far down the threshold the gallons moved v. how far the miles moved (it's actually 29.23. I also don't really care about the decimals).

[Geds]

Okay, I just went back and looked at Rosina's division instruction again.

Egad. That's frightening. I'm with Jesu on the whole long division thing.

[burgundy]

People nowadays seem inordinately impressed by anyone who can actually do simple arithmetic. I see people whipping out the calculator to divide a number by ten. *sigh*

Don't even talk to me about that. In my Stupid Management Class last night, we were looking at individual scores from a group exercise (where we scored group members on a variety of behaviors), and half the class pulled out calculators for addition. And the scores were on a 1-10 scale, so they weren't even big numbers. (They of course also used the calculators for computing averages, which involved dividing by four or five.) And they still took longer than I did doing it in my head. And these are graduate students.

In fairness, at least two people in the class load up on beer beforehand, and one of them was sitting next to me, so that may have skewed my perception of the class's performance.

[Geds]

Oh, and I do use goesinta for quick stuff. It gets way more complicated when both numbers have multiple digits, though.

[Jesurgislac]

51 goesinta 291 5 times, remainder 36...

[Jesurgislac]

Though how I do that in my head is:

50 into 300 would be 6, therefore 51 into 291 must be 5, multiply 51 by 5, subtract 255 from 291, which is subtracting 55 from 91, which must be a number between 30 and 40, it's 11 minus 5 so it's 36...

I cannot recall ever being told how to do this: but I certainly had to memorize the times tables from 1 to 12 and do addition and subtraction in my head/show your working. The technique just arrived, sometime in my teens, I think, when I actually had to be able to do reckoning like this at times when there wasn't pen and paper around.

[alex]

Kids need tutors if they can't complete their assignments! Rather than try to force them through it, get them some help. Take a look at www.ziizoo.com, an online, student-to-student tutoring platform. We launched in September and provide an online marketplace for students to find tutors. Our goal is to create a site where struggling students can get live, online, one-on-one help from US-based tutors (not low-cost, overseas tutors) in any subject matter at any time of day. Since our site has embedded whiteboards, text-chat and audio-chat, users only need a broadband connection and a relatively modern PC - no special software is required. And the best part is that, since ziizoo is a marketplace, tutors are free to set their own rates and hours - think eBay but for tutoring. Check out our site http://www.ziizoo.com to learn more about us.

[Geds]

The technique just arrived, sometime in my teens, I think, when I actually had to be able to do reckoning like this at times when there wasn't pen and paper around.

Yeah. A lot of practical math seems to do that. I think there's some point of convergence where some people say, "I still want to be able to use my brain to figure this out," and some people say, "Screw it, I've got a calculator," or worse, throw their hands up in dispair. I think everyone is probably capable of getting math and coming up with ways of simplifying it, but not everyone has the motivation.

And I didn't say it becomes impossible when you add in more digits, just that it gets more complicated. For me it's mostly on stuff where the last digit isn't a 5 or 0 and I get something screwed up (like 31 will go in to 188 6 times, but 32 won't. That can be a killer).

Although it's multiplication where the extra digits really complicate things. When I was bored in high school I used to calculate out how many seconds there are in a year. I think it was mostly to figure out how much discrete information I could keep track of at a time (this was before I'd figured out the joys of playing Tetris in my head and, I'm assuming, in the classes where there wasn't any reason to pass the time trying to figure out what various girls in the room would look like without clothes on, the true hobby of the high school male). I eventually figured out a system whereby I figured out one of the really long ones backwards, then reversed the numbers in order to go up to the next rung on the ladder.

[mmack]

Jesu and Geds,

The key to all this is to clamp your tongue at just the right angle out of the corner of your mouth as you do your goesintas so it's clear to all that you're furiously calculatin' some BIG ASS numbers, like so: >:^P

Note: furrowed brow is optional :^P

As a long ago lab partner told me in Auto Shop before he began to loosen a bolt with a torque wrench: "The key to solving problems is: It's all in how you hold your tongue, man."

:^)

[Jesurgislac]

For me it's mostly on stuff where the last digit isn't a 5 or 0 and I get something screwed up (like 31 will go in to 188 6 times, but 32 won't. That can be a killer).

Oh, the key point I think of my mental working was figuring out that if 32 won't go into 188 six times, that means the answer is 5 with a remainder: 32*5=160, 88-60=28. I do remember that being a very cool moment when I realised you can estimate an answer and check it by multiplying.

Yeah. A lot of practical math seems to do that. I think there's some point of convergence where some people say, "I still want to be able to use my brain to figure this out," and some people say, "Screw it, I've got a calculator," or worse, throw their hands up in dispair. I think everyone is probably capable of getting math and coming up with ways of simplifying it, but not everyone has the motivation.

Sure - and it's hard work. If the tool to do it automatically is there (Google Calculator! whee) then it's way much easier just to do it using a calculator. Not for dividing by 10, obviously. ;-)

[Geds]

mmack:

Damn skippy.

[Rosina]

mmack: Rosina, Richard, and Geds, didn't you all learn your goesintas?

950/5. Lesse, 5 goesinta 9 once, remainder 4, 5 goesinta 45 9 times . . .

Yes - we used to be tested on our tables every week, and there were prizes for who could recite say the 7 times table, forwards and backwards, the quickest (I think the prize was being first to collect your milk).

I used long division to divide 1632814 by 59. That's why I wrote down the multiples (and I chose 59 to be easy on myself).

I was 'poor' at mental arithmetic. This is compared to both my parents who could add up a column of figures (£,s,d) in their heads without making notes. Nowadays I'd probably count as a genius. But I prefer to write things down, or I'd spend ages worrying about where it went wrong. If on the second occasion your answer is different from the first, take more care the third time.

[Alias Billy Reuben]

***BREAKING NEWS***

Today on the Slacktivist blog, Fred devoted a full ten thousand words to the latest outrage: a teacher in Arkansas was sentenced to be horsewhipped and deported to Oklahoma for letting her class name a stuffed monkey "Darwin." Meanwhile, a mob of fundamentalist Christians outside the courtroom brandished weapons and demanded the death penalty. When questioned about his strong stand on this subject, Fred reiterated his principled opposition to theocracy whenever and wherever it is found. He pointed out similarities to the case two years ago where fundamentalist Christians went on a worldwide spree of arson, mayhem, and murder after cartoons were published mocking St. Paul, not to mention the "protest stonings" that caused the cancellation of the Lil Miss Florida pageant in Pensacola in 2002. The Slacktivites were almost unanimous in their condemnation of the savage theocratic verdict straight out of the Dark Ages. One exception was LubLub, who argued that - since not every single fundamentalist Christians is an abortion clinic bomber, book burner, or closeted-sodomite-wifebeater - it's not logically possible to condemn those who are. Generally speaking, however, the Slacktivist list remains firmly opposed, not only to fundamentalist Christian theocracy, but to all backwards, vicious, inhumane, and misogynistic theocratic regimes. No double standards or special pleading here!

Oh wait, I just found Patrick Duffy in my shower. I guess it was all a dream...

[Jesurgislac]

Is "Billy Reuben" Scott's real name? Or is this Aunursa?

[Raka]

Alias Billy Reuben: What the hell? In what world do you need to specifically and explicitly condemn every single act of idiocy before you are allowed to... well, condemn ANY act of idiocy? I don't think Fred or the Slacktivites have held any "Sharia in the USA" rallies. Fred's posts are generally either information you're not likely to run across on page A1 of the paper, or some insight and analysis that may not (in his perception) be ubiquitous in the meme-stream.

Call me crazy, but that strikes me as a pretty decent method of blogging. There are more than enough "yeah me too" blogs out there already. What's he going to add to the Sudan tizzy? That executing a schoolteacher over a teddy bear is pretty unreasonable? That Sudan might not have the most humane government? How is this news to any of us?

I suppose if slacktivist.com is your only source of news, then Fred is being awfully protectionist of them darn Muslamics. I think he's also been suspiciously silent on recent developments in the former states of the USSR-- obvious evidence of totalitarian sympathies (Scott warned us all along!). The fall of Italy's government matters less to him than that of a single sparrow. The heartless bastard hasn't spared a single word for the victims of the Ukrainian mine collapse. Fred claims to be compassionate, yet he tacitly endorses both drunk driving and cancer with his endless stonewalling!

[Rosina]

I'd guess the latter. No mention of Big Government.

[Raka]

More succinctly: it's a blog. He writes about things when he feels he has something meaningful to contribute. You can agree or disagree that what he contributes is meaningful, but unless he's made some claim to full coverage on every issue of importance, it's idiotic to judge him by the articles he doesn't write.

[hapax]

It's typical concern troll behavior. "Waahhh! You didn't blog about this thing that *I* think is really important, and since you didn't explicitly condemn it you must support it and you're a hypocrite and I WIN!"

There isn't really much point in engaging someone like that in conversation.

[Rosina]

And while Fred discusses mobile home parks, what are his views on business parks just off the A1? And note that we have discussed long division, but been remarkably silent about al-gebra (probably because of its Ayrab origins). We deserve to know what Fred thinks about Everything!

[Richard Hershberger]

"note that we have discussed long division, but been remarkably silent about al-gebra (probably because of its Ayrab origins)"

Whoa! You're getting ahead of yourself there! We first need to discuss fractions. You are either for them or against them. Everyone for, go stand on the right side; against on the left. No, you aren't allowed to linger in the middle, and no sneaking off to the bathroom.

[hapax]

Yay! Now it's time for the Fraction Anthem!

[mmack]

Surprised there was no mention in Billy Reuben's rant of Slacktivist posters useJ, Degs, Whys, 15% Wayne, Xapah, or Roachmaster. :^/

I agree it's not Scott. He may be sometimes be delusional and harbor an irrational hatred of Fred, but at least he puts his name on his posts.

C'mon, Scott, where ya' hidin at? (Taps foot, looks at watch)

[Brandi]

Anybody else here remember an Asimov short story called "The Feeling of Power?"

As for Billy Reuben: anyone who'd name themselves for the organic compound that makes shit the color it is is really just making it too easy for the rest of us.

[mmack]

Yay! Now it's time for the Fraction Anthem!

Oh, a half is bigger than a fouth, and even than a third,
It's even bigger than an eighth, or so I've often heard . . .

[Raka]

End the oppression of the numerator! Denominators of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your vinculum!

[mmack]

Y'know, If I wasn't so damned eager to add a pithy quote to this blog, I'd spell and grammar check everything.

1) I agree it's not Scott. He may sometimes be delusional and harbor an irrational hatred of Fred, but at least he puts his name on his posts.

- Perhaps we've found opponax again

2) Yay! Now it's time for the Fraction Anthem!

Oh, a half is bigger than a fourth, and even than a third,
It's even bigger than an eighth, or so I've often heard
A fourth is bigger than a fifth, and bigger than a sixth
And if your math book says it's not, you'd better get it fixed . . .

Note to Fred: If you change the comments, could you add spell check for those uv uss who kant tipe reel gud?

And cool emoticons.

[Raka]

Raka: Rise up...

That's right; you need to know elementary mathematics, junior-high political history, and a little Latin vocab to get a pun that was never very funny in the first place.

That's really me in a nutshell, right there.

[Raka]

Also, I forget to close italics tags.

[cjmr's husband]

@mmack,

Switch to firefox if possible.

It has a built-in spellchecker, which, for some reason, does not contain the word "firefox".

[Geds]

So a Google search of Billy Reuben brings up a very interesting connection.

And one that's even worse than the poop color crack...

Hee hee.

Poop. Crack.

I'll stop now.