“Creative math” is not math at all, it is more like learning a sorcerer’s handwritten manual by rote, and is useless in the real world.
There was a reason elementary and secondary students were forbidden the use of calculators in tests by the instructors. They get lazy and never understand the underlying concepts that lie at the base of all computations.
Now, you want a challenge, teach them the use of an old-fashioned slide rule. With trig functions, log, and a log log scale. All analog, no digital at all.
Teaching the old ways of computation even including the abacus would be great! It would give them a sense of history.
Kind of like some “programmers” today. To them it means going to staples and buying an off the shelf program for something to plug numbers into.
Now, you want a challenge, teach them the use of an old-fashioned slide rule. With trig functions, log, and a log log scale. All analog, no digital at all.
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You beat me to it. Slide rules Rule.
Been relearning them. Last I used them was back in high school, fifty-some years ago.