Arithmetic

Rounding: Contextual Issues

Previously, I discussed how to round a number to the nearest whole number [or tenth, ten, etc.]. I focused there on what to do when you are simply told to do it — what “round to nearest” means, and how that determines whether you round a particular number up or down. I also pointed out …

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What Operation Was She Doing?

(Archive question of the week) For Wednesdays, I plan to find a single interesting question from the past and discuss it. One of the things I’ve enjoyed about Ask Dr. Math is getting questions I’d never have thought of on my own, but which lead to some fascinating ideas. Here is an old favorite from …

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Dividing Right to Left, Adding Left to Right

I now want to start looking more deeply at some specific questions at various levels, starting with arithmetic, then algebra and geometry. Students learning arithmetic (and their parents) tend to think in terms of following some rote procedure, just because “that’s the way it’s done”. Modern educators try to focus more on deep understanding, so …

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A Sample of Ask Dr. Math, Part 2: Questions Outside of School

In the first post, I gave a small sampling of questions we’ve had from students, parents, and teachers, all related to school, and discussed how we like to deal with these. But we also get many questions with no direct relation to school. These may come from people who actually use math in their work …

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