Come to that, in what sense is that equation a "simplification"? Schoolteachers of mathematics who are themselves weak at the subject (in my experience, most of them) almost inevitably approach it as formalists: the manipulation of symbols, according to apparently arbitrary and externally meaningless linguistic rules, becomes their only consideration. As a schoolboy I took no interest in school mathematics, discovering an aptitude for the subject instead through fascination with Archimedean polyhedra leading to compulsion to calculate and build models of them; and I gather a number of other contributors to this list arrived here in a similarly accidental fashion. As a parent, I watched my own children's pre-school interest in the subject swiftly extinguished by mediocre teaching. As a universtity teacher, I time and again encountered students lacking any capacity to relate formal manipulation to what I understand as an underlying conceptual reality. As a grumpy old man, I realise that despite regular attempts by able mathematicians and educators to remedy the situation, nothing has changed. It occurs to me that Archimedes was doubtless to be heard muttering much the same sentiments a couple of millenia ago (in ancient Greek, presumably). Fred Lunnon On 4/26/16, Bill Gosper <billgosper@gmail.com> wrote:
The simplification 6(9) = 6×9 is an example of (choose one) a) associativity b) commutativity c) distributivity.
"Answer": c. Has anybody ever seen this usage of "the distributive law"? This is from the same Common Core idiots who outlaw "improper" fractions. They also insist that parens enclosing parens be changed to square brackets. --rwg _______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun