From: dking@raul.nas.nasa.gov (Dan King)
Subject: New Math Bigots (Was: More Bigots!) 
Organization: Numerical Aerodynamic Simulation Facility NASA
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 92 17:45:22 GMT
Reply-To: dking@raul.nas.nasa.gov (Dan King)

In article <78538@ut-emx.uucp> andy@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Some call me...Drew) writes:

>Further, if you can't laugh at yourself--and the song IS funny, no
>question--then you aren't likely to be taken seriously by anyone else.
>(I also recommend "New Math", from the same album, as an example of
>both Lehrer and I not taking ourselves so seriously...I'm studying to
>be a high school math teacher, and that song is one of the funniest
>things I've heard in quite a while.)

(The visual aids)
 342
-273
----

You can't take three from two, two is less than three, so you look at
the four in the tens place.
Now that's really four tens, so you make it three tens, regroup,
and you change the ten to ten ones and you add 'em to the two and get twelve,
so you take away three, that's nine.
Now instead of four in the tens place you've got three, 'cause you added one,
that is to say, ten, to the two, but you can't take seven from three so
you look in the hundreds place.
>From the three you then use one to make ten tens, and you know why four
plus minus one plus ten is fourteen minus one?
'Cause addition is commutative. Right! And so you have thirteen tens and
you take away seven and that leaves five.

Well, six, actually, but the idea is the important thing.

Now go back to the hundreds place - You're left with two, and you take
away one from two and that leaves...

Everybody get one? Not bad for the first day.

Hooray for New Math... New-w-w math...
It won't do you any good to review math...
It's so simple, so very simple
That only a child can do it!

Now the book that I got this problem out of wants you to do it in base eight.
But base eight is just like base ten really... (see above quote)
Shall we go for it? Hang on...

You can't take three from two, two is less than three, so you look at
the four in the 8's place.
Now that's really four eights, so you make it three eights, regroup,
and you change the eight to eight ones and you add 'em to the two and
get 1 2 base 8,
which is 10 base ten, so you take away three, that's seven.

Now instead of four in the eights place you've got three 'cause you added one,
that is to say eight to the two, but you can't take seven from three so
you look in the 64's.

64?
How did 64 get into it? I hear you cry.
Well, 64 is eight squared, don't you see...
... Ask a silly question and you get a silly answer.

From the three you then use one to make eight eights, you add those
eights to the three and get 1 3 base eight
Or in other words in base ten you have 11 and you take away seven and
seven from eleven is four!
Now go back to the 64's. You're left with two and you take away one from
two and that leaves...

Now let's not always see the same hands.
One. That's right. Whoever got one can stay after the show and clean the
erasers.

New math! New-w-w math.
It won't do you any good to review math.
It's so simple, so very simple,
That only a child can do it!

Come back tomorrow night, we're gonna do... FRACTIONS.
 --Tom Lehrer