Common Core math question is Algebra!!!! *gasp*
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You have to subtract 3 once you've done your addition.
3 is not 8, 5, or 10, and therefore is irrelevant.
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You can also get 4 when adding 8 + 5
Take -1 from 5 and add it to 8
(8 + (-1) = 7) then add 6.Now you're getting it. You can get any real number $x$ from any real number $y$ by adding an appropriate real number $z$.
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So basically, the teacher is really asking.
Solve for x
8 + 5 = 10 + x
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Which is what the question should say if that's the solution they want.
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No, -3 is the real number you add to 13 to get 10.
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Now you're getting it.
But it's pointless.
It's like asking someone.
How do you get an incomplete bridge, while building a bridge?
By not finishing the fucking problem. That's how.
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Yes. And good for them. Algebra was introduced too late before.
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-3 is also not 8, 5, or 10 and is irrelevant.
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I agree that we should be teaching algebra earlier.
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Wrong. Question is incomprehensible.
Well, nearly so. What makes it so hard to understand is the fact that they are taking a pretty basic arithmetic problem and asking you to solve it only part way. Since that seems like a stupid thing to do, your brain (and honestly, mine too) rejects that interpretation and goes: "Wut?"
You understand elementary school students get this, right?
They may only understand it because the teacher performs the similar problems for them 5-10 times in class before giving them the homework. Once you've seen it done, it's easier to figure out what the question is asking.
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Sure you can. You have to subtract 3 once you've done your addition.
That isn't what the question is asking, so you would get the question wrong.
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Since that
seems likeis a stupid thing to do your brain (and honestly, mine too) rejects that interpretation and goes: "Wut?"Fixed.
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Well, nearly so. What makes it so hard to understand is the fact that they are taking a pretty basic arithmetic problem and asking you to solve it only part way. Since that seems like a stupid thing to do, your brain (and honestly, mine too) rejects that interpretation and goes: "Wut?"
Yeah, essentially, they are not asking a stupid question, they are just asking the question stupidly.
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Yeah, essentially, they are not asking a stupid question, they are just asking the question stupidly
How can you be sure though?
If the question is asked that stupidly, how would you know on the test, that the answer the teacher gave would be the right answer?
No person can predict that answer out of the box.
Even @Captain Got the answer out of order, and would probably be marked off.
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Even @Captain Got the answer out of order, and would probably be marked off.
What are you basing that on?
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Fixed.
Good point. Working half way to a complete solution is a great way to learn concepts for higher math, but stupid for arithmetic. At this point, who cares what method you use to get the answer, as long as you get the right answer.
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What are you basing that on?
You gave:
Sure you can. You have to subtract 3 once you've done your addition.
The correct answer is:
Take 2 from the 5 and add it to the 8 (8 + 5 = 10 + 3)
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You would be marked off because the teacher is expecting you to say take 2 from 5 and add it to 10. Not add 8 and 5 and then subtract 3.
The point of common core math is to ADD up by chunks. And I only know that because I have a greater intellectual power to infer than a child, and can look at the answers I've seen and infer that answer.
You're asking a child to infer what a person MIGHT do, when adding 8 + 5.
That's a far greater task than just asking them to remember that 8 + 5 is 13.
Or even asking them to do this.
1< 8 +5 -- 13Common core addition become literally impractical when you reach big numbers.
12312891723973212 + 12312312809189There's so many steps of adding and removing.
And then the removing, becomes counting up, because of what they expect you to do in subtraction.You will never finish that problem with how Common Core has been described to me.
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So, another thought: How do they expect parents to help with homework when fundamental concepts like this are taught completely differently?
i.e. as a parent you ask me how do I get 10 from 8 and 5 and I think you (or the teacher) is a moron because that question doesn't make sense and I can't help you. And even if I do help you you get the question wrong because I tell you to do 8 + 5 = 13 - 3 = 10.
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ITT: People whose grand parents rejected new math.
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Little Bobby Tables didn't even try to submit "add minus 3" or "add two to the 8, and subtract it from the 5$. Or "take 5 from the 8 and 5 from the 5 and put them in a pile." He just said "You can't do it." You are just assuming that I would have points marked off.
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The whole idea, as I understand it, is to do math quickly in your head by rounding.
So you say "8 + 5, 8 is 2 shy of 10, 5-2 is 3, so thirteen."
Which is entirely how I add two-digit numbers in my head: 28 + 15, tha'ts the same as 30 + 12, so 42.
ETA: 43. Fuck my brain.
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He just said "You can't do it."
Because from the way the question is phrased you can't do it. You can not do the operation 8 + 5 to get a number other than 13.
"8 and 5". That literally means 8 + 5.
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For example
53 - 12
Add up from 12 to 53. Take the additions, and add those to make the difference
12 + 3 = 15
15 + 5 = 20
20 + 30 = 50
50 + 3 = 533 + 5 + 30 + 3
take 2 from the last 3 to add to 3 to make 5. INCEPTION
3 - 2 = ?
2 + 1 = 3
15 + 5 + 30 + 1
10 + 30 + 1
40 + 1
41This becomes impossible for large numbers, resulting in recursion so grand it would freeze a student on a test.
Thus the method is impractical, and they have to learn long addition anyway.
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If the question is asked that stupidly, how would you know on the test, that the answer the teacher gave would be the right answer?
You don't, which is why the question is asked "stupidly" - stupidly in the sense that it's too ambiguous and, as @abarker said, seemingly makes most people (including myself) go
.Now, ok, a common core student has a lot of context to go on, so it may make sense to him/her. At least, it should be less ambiguous, since that student doesn't yet know of all the other possible operations that map 13 to 10.
To me this smells of the kind of thinking where all students are thought of as utterly incapable, and everything has to be dumbed down so much that it becomes largely incomprehensible.
But, meh, I don't really know anything about teaching at that level, so...
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So you say "8 + 5, 8 is 2 shy of 10, 5-2 is 3, so thirteen."
Sensible. But not what the question asked.
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Get a pile of 8 things. Then another pile of 5 things. Surely you can find a way to put them together so you have a pile of 10 things.
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No, it's not. The question asks "How do you do step one of this problem", and the answer is "grab 2 out of the 5 to add to the 8, making the problem 10 + 3".
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Get a pile of 8 things. Then another pile of 5 things. Surely you can find a way to put them together so you have a pile of 10 things.
And perhaps rephrasing the question to something like this would have made more sense to all involved?
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As long as that doesn't end up being, push the piles together and take 3 from the new pile and move it aside.
Then you failed.
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I have to imagine it made sense to the kids, except for Little Bobby Tables, who obviously was too busy flinging boogers at Sally.
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ITT: People whose grand parents rejected new math.
Your comparison is idiotic. Common Core isn't "new math". It teaches math in the most belgiuming idiotic way I have ever seen.
Do the "shortcuts" work? In some cases. Does everyone use them? No (I don't). And, as @xaade has pointed out, they have to learn long addition and subtraction later anyway. Common core even includes this in the curriculum. So the curriculum that was supposed to make the US more competitive in education is actually making it take longer to teach arithmetic‽
<I may be risking a whoosh here
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They aren't testing if you can find 10 in 13, they are testing whether you can infer exactly how they would expect you to solve the problem, if you follow their logic.
The point is to give children a different logic flow that can be easier.
The problem is that it lumps all children from one bucket to another bucket, and if the child doesn't understand the new way, they fail.
Trust me, I had this problem in school, having right answers rejected because the teacher didn't like how I determined the answer, and it involved common core type thinking.
Now they're doing math my way and a different set of students are failing.
I'm not faulting them for the way they are approaching math.
I'm faulting them for expecting every student to understand it.
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Which is as dumb as saying you got a trig problem wrong because you used a different method or an integration problem wrong because you used u-substitution when it wasn't needed.
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So the curriculum that was supposed to make the US more competitive in education is actually making it take longer to teach arithmetic‽
QFT
It improves test scores by taking the whole class and putting them on the short bus.
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Considering your comments, I doubt you know what the point of new math or common core is. (It's to teach abstraction to young students). It certainly isn't to teach arithmetic. That's what calculators are for. But calculators don't prove theorems or make business decisions.
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(It's to teach abstraction to young students)
If
Then it will fail, because the topic is not something an elementary teacher understands.
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It certainly isn't to teach arithmetic. That's what calculators are for. But calculators don't prove theorems or make business decisions.
What's the point of a calculus course? Solving integration and differentiation problems is what calculators are for too.
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That's happening.
Are the kids getting punished for it? I seem to recall anecdata suggesting such - the pupil being in the wrong for pointing out the teacher's factual inaccuracies while the teacher insists they're right.
<img src="http://thefederalistpapers.integratedmarket.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/common-core-math-problem.jpg" width=200"
Tell how to make ...
Please tell me the maths problem setters aren't the same ones doing English...
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It's to teach abstraction to young students
Why is teaching abstractions to kids who don't even know basic arithmetic yet supposed to be a "good thing?" Kids that age don't need to prove theorems or make business decisions. 99.999% of adults don't need to prove theorems.
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the pupil being in the wrong for pointing out the teacher's factual inaccuracies while the teacher insists they're right.
Happened when I was a student. Even in college.
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Because America insists on comparing it's mandatory-education-no-child-left-behind failure rates, to Chinese success rates within the top 20% of the population the Chinese actually educate.
These people failed statistics.
America teaches the whole distribution _/\_ _/ \_ China teaches _ \_There's no way to compare the successes of Americans of IQ 70 - 130, to Chinese of IQ 110 - 130
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Considering your comments, I doubt you know what the point of new math or common core is. (It's to teach abstraction to young students).
Abstraction needs a solid math foundation before it is taught. here are a few lines from a book about the failure of new math[1]:
[It] ignored completely the fact that mathematics is a cumulative development and that it is practically impossible to learn the newer creations if one does not know the older ones
abstraction is not the first stage but the last stage in a mathematical development
[Arithmetic is] what calculators are for. But calculators don't prove theorems or make business decisions.
And what are Johnny and Suzy supposed to do when they don't have a calculator handy? What if they end up working in a small shop where they need to be able to do basic math on the fly? How can they be sure that Joe at the supermarket gave them the correct change? You use arithmetic pretty frequently without using a calculator. Without those skills, you end up becoming a pretty easy mark.
[1] Why Johnny Can't Add: the Failure of the New Math by Morris Kline, pub 1973
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Happened when I was a student. Even in college.
I remember two incidents when I was in college that I challenged a professor's factual accuracy. In one, he admitted I was right, but still refused to give me credit for the exam question. The other, after significant research to prove I was right, he gave me credit for the question and offered me a job.
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You use arithmetic pretty frequently without using a calculator. Without those skills, you end up becoming a pretty easy mark.
Well......
People have been counting up change for a long time.
Again, I don't blame the technique, I blame the everyone-must-learn-this-technique way of teaching.
Decades of school teaching and they haven't figured out how to handle the problem of everyone learns differently.
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Because kids can learn abstraction a lot more easily than adults can. Learning how to deal with incomplete information is something most adults never master.
Arithmetic is easy. Logical thinking is pretty easy, but it gets harder to learn as you get older.
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And what are Johnny and Suzy supposed to do when they don't have a calculator handy? What if they end up working in a small shop where they need to be able to do basic math on the fly? How can they be sure that Joe at the supermarket gave them the correct change? You use arithmetic pretty frequently without using a calculator. Without those skills, you end up becoming a pretty easy mark.
Note that people are whining that "kids are taking longer to learn arithmetic", not that they aren't learning arithmetic. They are learning more general skills first.
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His point wasn't, don't teach it.
His point was that we teach traditional math first, and abstraction later, like we are already doing.Algebra comes later. And it was mandatory when I was in middle school.
Trust me, I know what I'm doing.
My 4 year old daughter can already subtract values less than 10, and can multiply by 2, and count to 20.
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They are learning more general skills first.
Did you read the other parts of that post? Abstraction is not a more general skill.[1] Now go back, and try again.
[1] I concede that the current method works for some, but it will not work for everyone.
