Arithmetic

Hard Numbers, Hard Living

milhayser | December 11, 2013

On EvolutionBlog, Jason Rosenhouse confronts the challenge of basic math education: “we need to find a balance between hammering the basic skills, while also making it clear that there is so much more to mathematics than arithmetic.”  Rosenhouse rejects the approach of New Math, “teaching grade-schoolers about set theory and the axiomatic method,” instituted briefly in the U.S. after the Soviets launched a giant ball bearing named Sputnik into orbit.  Rosenhouse goes on to question whether teachers should emphasize experimental mathematics, wherein the brute force of computation is used to…