The other night, Ms.Mac had to help her lovely son James with some homework. The task was short division. Unfortunately, James was taught another system at school than Ms.Mac was not so many years ago. Hence, Ms.Mac was not much help. She already turned into a pillar of salt, imagining what happend when James will have to learn long division.
I've never thought of this, but there are really several methods of splitting the taks of such a simple thing as division. I made an examble for 2736 divided by 26:
4 comments:
Ooooohhhh, now my brain hurts. I am quite sure when I did that sum and tried to finish it I didn't get a remainder of 8. I think I shall send James to you when he needs help with Long Division!
Poor kids. Should learn how to use a calculator :-)
The bad thing about Gomad's and James' variants are, in the end there is an equation on paper that looks like this:
7236 : 26 = 278 + 8
which is complete bollocks of course, as James will learn later in high scool.
err... no bollocks. completely right of course :-)
Of course, the "+ 8" is mathematically wrong. I was just too lazy to write "remainder 8" or "8/26" all the time.
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