Math
Quick…when an eight-year-old asks you what 29 divided by five is do you flinch with a long pause, or say, 5 and 4/5, or then think that’s too hard and say 5.8? Both my answers got a blank stare from her even if I did them in quick-draw fashion. Too much for her, but enough that she realized she had done an earlier part of her problem wrong and it should have been five into 30.
I’m no mathly brilliant person. Far from it. But I could really quickly do something so simple at 29 divided by five. It’s not hard. But it reminded me of pie charts when I was younger than Big A and in the second grade. Ms. Mindeman was very patient until she about through the damn charts out the window.
I knew the problem Big A was doing. Her right answer to that point should have been 30 after a series of equations. But she got 29. What she didn’t get was the fact that I answered two ways fast and really didn’t pause on the draw.
I love numbers. I can read, I’m not kidding, an agate page for sports or business for a half hour and just think about how they all work. Doesn’t mean I know a darn thing about any of it, but I can see them. I can tell you that if a guy is 1-8 passing he threw for a 12.5-percent completion rate and I won’t blink. Or if he is 1-8 hitting it’s a .125 baqtting average, or if a stock falls from 40 to 30 points it lost a quarter of it’s value, but that 50 minus 30 is 40 percent of said value gone…blah blah blah.
We should be using agate pages in newspapers, sports and business, to teach this stuff.
That boxscores and all that little stuff in the newspaper is amazing for math.