I'd like to know who put up this piece of propaganda.
The "old" fashioned way isn't even correct. That's not how you do subtraction.
The second way seems more cumbersome. It might be more cumbersome. But its really nothing more than inverting a subtraction problem and turning it into an addition problem. Its just a different logical method for performing the same problem.
It's more cumbersome just because it's small numbers that most adults can do without really thinking about. Rules for things like this tend to look kind of silly when dealing with trivial examples. Trying to subtract something like 5 digit numbers or larger in the old way is kind of a pain with all the borrowing and stuff, the new way is actually how I do it in my head even though I never learned it that way in school.
Last edited by Nellise; 2019-05-07 at 04:40 PM.
The second method is pretty standard for doing it mentally. It just looks weird writing it down.
If something costs $13.73 and they pay with a $20 do you really cross out and carry all the 0s in your head to determine the change or do you inverse it into addition to calculate it quickly?
The new way is even more pain in the arse for large numbers.These methods are counting using paper/handwriting and not method for calculating mentally. Plus my point stands about divison.
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Yeah if it's for mental maths it's acceptable and easier way to remember stuff. Maybe someone is trying to twist this to gain political points over "liberals". Can someone confirm if they are using it to teach how to do mental maths or are they actually using it for paper calculation? If it's the first one it's ok, if it's for the latter it's just stupid.
Isn't it irrelevant how difficult the exam is, since your results would be compared to those of the other students?
As for the actual topic, maybe @Slant can help here. Do you release your exam questions in the internet? I would like see them.
Subtraction from a two-digit number is two step process. Its not complicated or hard and most will simply do it by memory.
The image is still misleading because it doesn't show the intervening steps in the "old" way.
In this particular case, you're not subtracting 12 from 32. You subtract singles column (2-2=0) and the the 10's column (3-1=2) to get the answer of 20.
A slightly harder problem is 32-13. Try explicitly stating the intervening steps required to do it.
I don't think they're published anywhere, although they're not classified in any manner. It's just that there's no market for them. Teachers have access to old exams to give their students preparation exams (dry runs, if you will), but other than that... I'm not aware of any place you could look them up.
While I'm here, though, two things that crossed my minds. And yes, I know they're contradictory:
1. Students will usually pick up any reason they can find to protest anything regarding school. It's just something they do when they feel treated unfairly, which is pretty much all the time. Source: Myself and every one of you, you know how you were...
2. When Bavarian students joined this protest, it's a sign to me that something went wrong. Bavaria is notorious for having the hardest school system in Germany. When they start bitching, there may be something to it.
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Not in Germany. They have no problems failing an entire class if everyone fucks up. You're right or you're wrong. Your fellow students being wrong doesn't make your own result better or worse. Averaging a score based on the overall performance of the entire class is a stupid system and I hope no educational system on this planet does that. It would inevitably lead to the dumbification of humanity.
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