January 23, 2007
Most boring post ever.
I get nostalgic about math. Dunno why, I guess it was like a game back when I was a kid. A game they bored me to tears with by too much repition, but still. I kinda think it would be fun to do algebra sometimes. Anyways, I saw a Japanese teacher showing a student how to find square roots by hand. I was intrigued, cause we don't even bother with that in the U.S. (use the almighty calculator, student!). Soon, I had figured out how to do square roots using the Japanese method. It's simpler than I ever suspected.
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wow, that wasn't boring, it was facinating! Thanks
ReplyDeleteWhile it is true that, for the most part, Japanese education fails at critical thinking and generally adheres to a rote learning method, things like this show that not everything is lost. Actually, I'm sad that we didn't do this in school. This goes on my list of wasted education, right next to memorizing pointless dates for history tests.
ReplyDeleteI printed the pdf version of the explanation and was working on it during some free time at work yesterday.
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ReplyDeletedoes that mean I was your source of new knowledge for the day?:)
ReplyDeleteThat hurt my brain in ways you can't understand...
ReplyDeleteClay! At last! I have discovered the small piece of paper on which you jotted the URL for this site. Ha ha. I have added you to my blogroll. Hope you don't mind. Shoot me an email or something, if you get some free time. Good times in Kyoto, man. :-) Btw, I once wrote a paper on RSA encryption and prime number theory that pulled from my Calculus textbooks and Asian Studies texts as well. The Chinese had some interesting ideas about primes. But yeah, anyway. I am really bad at math, so I second the comment Stephanie left above. Ha ha.
ReplyDeleteDeas your email was broken last time I found it on your site!
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