http://www.dr-mikes-math-games-for-kids.com/blog/2010/07/the-mouse-eating-geniu-of-bihar/ The official blog of Dr Mike's Math games for Kids Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:27:08 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 http://www.dr-mikes-math-games-for-kids.com/blog/2010/07/the-mouse-eating-geniu-of-bihar/comment-page-1/#comment-1001 Estimation and Logic | Math Games for Kids Blog Math Games for Kids Blog Tue, 12 Oct 2010 04:44:39 +0000 http://www.dr-mikes-math-games-for-kids.com/blog/?p=105#comment-1001 [...] Thirdly, it’s rather vague. Yes, you could define carefully the steps, and say “round each multiplicand to the nearest 10 or 100 or 0.1 or whatever ensures there’s only one non-zero digit”. For a small handful of kids, this may even be the best way to teach estimation. For most people, however, the best way to teach it is to engage their intuition. Train them to intuitively find a number that’s near one of the multiplicands – one they find easy to deal with – and multiply that instead. They know best what’s easy for them. It may e different for different kids, despite the uniformity our education system induces. For an extreme example, read about the uneducated Mushar man asked to multiply 35 by 10. [...] [...] Thirdly, it’s rather vague. Yes, you could define carefully the steps, and say “round each multiplicand to the nearest 10 or 100 or 0.1 or whatever ensures there’s only one non-zero digit”. For a small handful of kids, this may even be the best way to teach estimation. For most people, however, the best way to teach it is to engage their intuition. Train them to intuitively find a number that’s near one of the multiplicands – one they find easy to deal with – and multiply that instead. They know best what’s easy for them. It may e different for different kids, despite the uniformity our education system induces. For an extreme example, read about the uneducated Mushar man asked to multiply 35 by 10. [...]

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