this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
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I've heard complaints of senior software engineers who, though they do all carry calculators in their pockets and even usually have laptops open in front of them in the meetings, avoid doing math of any kind (simple order of magnitude multiplication, for example) in front of other people. Which makes group decision-making super obtuse.
So, maybe there is something for teachers to do along the lines of let's get confident and quick at doing this math however you want to do it. I hope things are changing in this direction.
As a senior software engineer with a degree in electrical engineering, I'll 99% of the time pull up a python shell to do simple arithmetic. Or Google "1 day in minutes"
Yeah, I would count that as ready to math in real time. I don't trust myself to do much in my head anymore.
This is my primary use of Python. Glad I'm not the only one.
They are. A lot of the new math curriculum my kid took in elementary school was exactly about that. Estimating, quick ways to calculate things, and sort of an underlying grasp of what it all means vs just memorizing multiplication tables or something. So much better than the bullshit way they taught me 40 years ago.
IMO memorizing those multiplication tables was one of the most useful things they taught in elementary school. They are teaching tricks now that separated the kids who were good at math from the ones who weren't (since the ones who were good could figure out a lot of these tricks on their own to get through the grind of pages of questions quicker), but knowing my multiplication tables was and still is an essential part of doing quick math in my head.