ANOTHER impossibly stupid Common Core worksheet sure to make your kid a moron

The Daily Caller ^ | 2/12/2014 | Eric Owens

[rktman]

Here is the latest in a long line of frighteningly stupid Common Core math worksheets to bubble up courtesy of Twitter, according to Twitchy.

[rktman]

Hmmmm. I guess close is good enough huh? You won't need to know the "actual" answer because you won't need to use it for anything icky like a job or something that puts constraints on your free time. Who buys into this crap???? I got a fairly "unreasonable" answer for these idiots.

[cripplecreek]

One of my personal favorites.

[rktman]

LOL! Like I said, close is good enough. Lord help us.

[KarlInOhio]

It's a worksheet on using estimation to make sure the real answer is in the right range. In this case the problem is 354+291=645, with an estimate of 300+200=500. I disagree with the rounding of 291 down to 200 when it should be rounded up to 300 giving an estimate of 600. But estimation is a valid technique for making sure that the real answer is just horribly wrong and for real life when you need to do something like estimate how much fertilizer you need (since you can't buy 6.47839 bags, 7 is a good enough answer).

It's even more important in multiplication when one mistake can get an answer an order of magnitude away from the real answer.

[MeshugeMikey]

theres some sort of useless ..aka pointless rounding off going on there by WHY....

the purpose of the excerise escapes me entirely!

“transgender math” perhaps?

[cripplecreek]

It makes no sense. If they were to round the numbers correctly they would have the correct answer.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Agreed. Mentally check all calculations. Do not depend on electronics. You might make an entry error.

[SoothingDave]

Yeah, I would round both of those up. 400 + 300 = 700

Yep, when you throw the numbers into a calculator and slip a digit you should have some idea when the number is wildly off.

Estimation has its places, but it seems to be given way too much emphasis.

[Homer1]

agreed that the estimation is terrible....especially for addition. 291 is much close to 300. all they are accomplishing here is validating that the 1st digit is close; so for addition, this estimation exercise is not of much value...

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

I agree with you. They are attempting, in math at least, to teach a wise check on ones calculations.

[zavvone]

Damm - where was this math when the bank was calculating my mortgage. Could have saved a few hundred dollars a month!!!

[So Cal Rocket]

To put this example in real life terms:

Suppose an airplane is flying from St. Louis to Hawaii... it needs 354 gallons of fuel to reach the west coast and another 291 gallons of fuel to get from the west coast to Hawaii. How many gallons of fuel must the pilot put in his plane to make sure he gets to Hawaii?

300 + 200 = 500... close enough.

[cripplecreek]

If they had rounded correctly to the nearest hundred they still would have run out of fuel but might have been able to glide the last 45 miles.

[knittnmom]

IMO, 354 should also be rounded up instead of down. (I thought 50 and under round down, and 51 and up round up.)

[BikerJoe]

Estimation has its places, but it seems to be given way too much emphasis.

I'm actually glad to see them trying to get kids thinking about whether they did it correctly. LONG before Common Core, I'd sit in reviews where engineers had stuff going faster than light or something, and I was able to see the problem just because the order of magnitude was wrong, but for some reason, they'd never see it.

There are lots of reasons to hate Common Core, but I'm not sure this is one of them.

[9YearLurker]

My immediate estimate of that would be 350 plus 300, just as quick and much more accurate than 500!

[9YearLurker]

The trouble is, this sort of estimation has become a part of every math problem, needlessly gumming up and dumbing down regular math instruction.

[KarlInOhio]

I fell for the old trick in grade school where I wanted the estimate to be the rounded value of the result (600) instead of rounding the inputs and taking what you get. I had a lot of red marks on my homework because I liked calculating the real number and hated when the estimate didn't match it, even when the teacher was trying to break us of that method to get us to quickly round the inputs and add rather than add and then round off.

[Grampa Dave]

If you have a younger relative enrolled in one of these so called core systems, do them a favor for the rest of their lives..

Enroll them in Kumon learning center and pay for them to learn how to do math.

http://www.kumon.com/?gclid=CKjojP_CybwCFYhbfgodyRAA0g&sissr=1

One of our younger relatives became the village idiot in math in his Californicator school.

This is inspite of his gene pool on both sides having high math processors.

His parents enrolled him in a Kumon math tutoring class. In a couple of months, he went from village idiot to doing real math two+ grades ahead. He became a member of the Math Olympics and still is a member.

[MichiganCheese]

Why not just teach kids to do addition so they get the right answer. Then they don’t have to worry about estimating the number, they know what it actually is.