Stone Soup by Jan Eliot for September 27, 2015

Sure, she was there physically. Probably not mentally…

That was before Common Core Math.

One of those funny things – like 2+2x2 is now 6, instead of it having been 2+(2×2) …

Common Core strikes again.

Train A leaves the station at 3:15, train B leaves another station at 3:30 when will they pass figuring that A . . . . . . . !

Here’s the question: If Jan decides, “Hey, if Bill and Darby can do it, then so can I,” and switches to Sunday-only strips starting 10/18, then how many daily strips remain?

Oh boy.

In other words Holly never paid attention to that math when in 4th grade and cannot help Alix.I will miss the daily strips. Means no running stories.

She is simply trying to teach you how to avoid work!

I have had dyscalculia since I was 40, due to a severe illness. When I was looking at a friend’s daughter’s Common Core math work, I realized it was exactly the method I had been using to mentally do sums. 12 × 11? 12 times 10 is easy, and just add another 12 and you’re done. Now, give me a pencil and I’m totally lost!

I have 2 quick math related stories. When I was in high school (almost 40 years ago) I took Algebra II and Trig at the same time. I did well in Algebra II, but in Trig I kept grasping the concepts like a week after the test so I thought I was going to end up with a D for the class, but the teacher gave me a C (I think he realized that I was actually grasping the concepts instead of just going through the motions). When I got to college the next year we had to take a math placement test and I was sure I was going to end up back in Trig, but I ended up going straight to Calculis. Later I found out that I’d ended up in the top 25% of the Trig portion of the exam, so I guess I really did learn the concepts.

Story 2: A few years ago I was shopping with a friend, she was studying for her masters in Chemistry at the time so obviously she knew her math, but she was stumped trying to figure out the best unit price between two differnt size packages on an item. I blurted out the answer while she was trying to stumble through the calculations and she gave me a shocked look and said, “You do head math, I’d need a paper and pencil to figure that out.”

4th grade math was easy-peasy for me. Of course, that was so long ago that we only had 7 numbers to deal with.

“help” does not mean “do for”.