My son was taught this method at school as THE way to do multiplication. Imagine my confusion when he brought homework back and I started doing multiplication the way we were all taught, only to be told "DADDY, you don't know anything!".
Do you live in the UK? I read an article some time ago about a new methods of multiplication and division that was being taught at UK elementary schools. Parents had trouble with it because they were not taught that way.
While the new simple methods got the job done, I still think the old methods are worth teaching because they're required when doing some advanced math later on.
The difficult method of long division, for example. After elementary school arithmetic, I've had to re-learn the method several times. In grade school it was doing divisions of numbers but later the same method was used for division of polynomials, then doing binary and again when learning how to compute crc checksums and hassling with polynomial fields in crypto class.
Math education is not necessarily supposed to be about learning how to get shit done (if it were, it would be obsolete because of calculators), but rather learning methods to deal with numbers, polynomials and other algebraic beings.
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My son was taught this method at school as THE way to do multiplication. Imagine my confusion when he brought homework back and I started doing multiplication the way we were all taught, only to be told "DADDY, you don't know anything!".
Do you live in the UK? I read an article some time ago about a new methods of multiplication and division that was being taught at UK elementary schools. Parents had trouble with it because they were not taught that way.
While the new simple methods got the job done, I still think the old methods are worth teaching because they're required when doing some advanced math later on.
The difficult method of long division, for example. After elementary school arithmetic, I've had to re-learn the method several times. In grade school it was doing divisions of numbers but later the same method was used for division of polynomials, then doing binary and again when learning how to compute crc checksums and hassling with polynomial fields in crypto class.
Math education is not necessarily supposed to be about learning how to get shit done (if it were, it would be obsolete because of calculators), but rather learning methods to deal with numbers, polynomials and other algebraic beings.