"I would need a pencil and paper..."
Yeah right. She would need a calculator. Typical liberal leftist drivel. She's too stupid to lead.
American kids are taught to hate math at an early age. The educators make it as painful and tedious as possible while not showing any practical purpose for any of it. When the students hit high school, they're only required to take two math classes. After being taught for 10 years that it's boring crap with no purpose, most of them take Algebra 1 and Basic Geometry freshmen and sophomore year, do the minimum effort to pull a C, then brain-dump it and never look back.
I transferred from P.S. 45 in Ozone Park (Queens) to Christ the King Grammar School in third grade in 1958. This makes me appreciate what I owe the Dominican Sisters.
Math expert Alfred Posamentier, dean of the City College school of education, said most Americans can't add fractions in their heads, leaving Weingarten in good company. "I hate to say it, but I would cut her slack on that one," he said.
And there lies the problem: Most Americans should be able to add simple fractions and perform other basic calculations in their heads, and the fact that they can't is further evidence that many of our public schools and the people who teach there are not getting the job done.
On the other hand, this was an embarrassingly elementary math problem. I don't think any professional adult should admit to this level of innumeracy and expect to get away unscathed. She might as well have added, "I don't read good, but I can sound words out."
Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.
in general,
1/N + 1/M = (N+M)/(NxM),
so this doesn't take much effort - - even a mental midget could do it without paper when the denominators are as small as 3 and 4!
"I would need a pencil and paper..."
Yeah right. She would need a calculator. Typical liberal leftist drivel. She's too stupid to lead.
Yeah, that was pretty pitiful. Finding the answer took me about 10 seconds and I consider myself pretty math dumb.
If what I've heard is true, she is in good company. A usually reliable source told me the math on the teacher licensure exam is at no more than the fifth grade level. The reason is that too many ed school grads will fail if asked to perform beyond that.
This thread convinces me that FReepers will argue about anything . . .
Fraction factions?
Please get me more info about this creature along with some photos. This deserves a YouTube mocking. Thanks.
re: my previous post
There probably isn't enough good info here to make a YouTube after all.
[insert low whistle here......]
One of the reasons she is on the team is because she can do something most of the other high level math kids can't do and that is 'head-math.' Every year when we watch the kids on T.V. it floors me that there will be a long Calculus question these kids from these magnet schools can almost do in their heads but when given a 4 function question, all 3 teams freeze. Last weeks debacle was "In which way are lemons cheaper? 3 for a dollar, .25 each or 5 for 2 dollars." Silence. This after some long question involving a cosine where the teams were buzzing in on top of each other. It was good for a chuckle as my kid was rolling on the floor going "You IIIDIOTS!! It's B!"
Mental math is a skill that not everyone can do. Myself, I'm all over percents as in "If that dress is 49.99 and I have a 10% off coupon but during the hours of 1-3 it is an additional 15% off, how much is it?" I'm so there.
I did it in my head and I am not even nine (anymore LOL).
Guess most HS grads can still be Union Heads. To think that an idiot like this has childrens educational/economic welfare in their hands.
Pray for W and Our Troops
bump
My "in the head" method produces .58333...
The excuse of needing paper to show her work rings hollow on two counts: first it takes a real idiot to not be able to get 12 as the product of the denominators as a common denominator, see that the numerators when over the denominator 12 will be 1 x 4 = 4 and 1 x 3 = 3, and add them to get the numerator of 7 all in one's head.
Second, public school teachers actually seem to go out of their way to discourage showing work: the grade on the basis of the answer only, no partial credit for substantially correct work, don't dock students for not showing work, and accept papers where the work and/or answers only are packed into space that makes such work as is shown unreadable.
Any so called educator who can't do this in their head in one second or less then shouldn't be part of the education system, because they are the problem.