Normal kids don't need math tutors

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

[QUOTE=Boyo Jim]
Thank you.

You either know the ratio between the legs and the hypoteneuse and multiply; or you square the two legs, add that together and take the square root of the result.

I wouldn’t want to figure the square root of 16,200 without a calculator.
[/QUOTE]

Right. But …

Okay, if you knew the distances involved, and then knew you had to figure out the square root, and your calculator had the little square root symbol on it, and you pushed it, and you came up with 318 feet (or whatever), you would know that was wrong. I knew it was wrong. The kid figured it was right. After all, that was what the calculator said.

Obviously, it has to be shorter than the distance if you ran the bases. After I explained that, he seemed to get it.

So as a double check of sorts I asked him how far it would be if we drilled straight through the center of the earth to the other side, supposing that the circumference of the earth is 24,000 miles. Again, he knew the procedure. Again–and this time without a calculator–he came up with a preposterous result. I mean obviously preposterous although this time with the decimal in the wrong place so it was 70,000 miles (or something like that). (Of course we have to add one extra mile since we live in Denver.)

“So, Kid, if you go around it’s 24,000 miles, if you go halfway around it’s 12,000 miles, and if you go straight through it’s 70,000 miles. Right?”

Kid gets perplexed look. Whatever the calculator says.

22

[QUOTE=Hilarity N. Suze]
Right, but if you have just caught a grounder and tagged third, how far do you have to throw it to get the batter out at first?

(Okay, I don’t know a lot about baseball either.)
[/QUOTE]

Depending on how fast the grounder got to the fielder and whether it was taken first by the shortstop and flipped to the third baseman for a force or fielded by the third baseman who then ran to tag the bag, approximately 127 feet. Of course, if you only need one out or the ball came too slowly to get the double play the distance is 0 feet as the ball gets tossed somewhere else, maybe the pitcher or another infielder. You’d love to be able to go to second for a double play but the runners were probably in motion and thus it’s something like 6-5-3 or 5-3 if you’re lucky and the batter is somewhat slow.

23

Is he using an HP calculator or something?

24

[QUOTE=Hilarity N. Suze]
Right. But …

Okay, if you knew the distances involved, and then knew you had to figure out the square root, and your calculator had the little square root symbol on it, and you pushed it, and you came up with 318 feet (or whatever), you would know that was wrong. I knew it was wrong. The kid figured it was right. After all, that was what the calculator said.

Obviously, it has to be shorter than the distance if you ran the bases. After I explained that, he seemed to get it.

So as a double check of sorts I asked him how far it would be if we drilled straight through the center of the earth to the other side, supposing that the circumference of the earth is 24,000 miles. Again, he knew the procedure. Again–and this time without a calculator–he came up with a preposterous result. I mean obviously preposterous although this time with the decimal in the wrong place so it was 70,000 miles (or something like that). (Of course we have to add one extra mile since we live in Denver.)

“So, Kid, if you go around it’s 24,000 miles, if you go halfway around it’s 12,000 miles, and if you go straight through it’s 70,000 miles. Right?”

Kid gets perplexed look. Whatever the calculator says.
[/QUOTE]

So what you’re saying is that you intuitively know what the ballpark answer of a question like this should be, but you don’t remember the particular formula to determine the exact answer?

I think you can be a lot more helpful than you think you can be. You can show him how to visualize problems. You can re-learn the basic math stuff – it will come back. Hey, if you can just get him to plug in the right formula into the calculator, you don’t even need to do that.

It’s kid stuff. :stuck_out_tongue:

25

[QUOTE=Hilarity N. Suze]
Okay, if you knew the distances involved, and then knew you had to figure out the square root, and your calculator had the little square root symbol on it, and you pushed it, and you came up with 318 feet (or whatever), you would know that was wrong. I knew it was wrong. The kid figured it was right. After all, that was what the calculator said.
[/QUOTE]
In the thread on square roots currently in General Questions, yabob said
[QUOTE=yabob]
BTW, ESTIMATING is what I think we are really losing. Back when I was a grad assistant, it used to annoy me no end when students cranked numbers through their calculators, got something that was obviously grossly wrong and seemed unaware of it. If the actual answer is 7.85, and you make a couple arithmetic errors and wind up with 17.2, that’s one thing, but winding up with 988,355,670 should at least make you say “look, this is obviously wrong, but I don’t know where I screwed up”.
[/QUOTE]
This thread has convinced me that he’s right.

26

[QUOTE=Hilarity N. Suze]
My kid […] was figuring out the distance from 1st base to 3rd. I give him props because he knew the procedure. (I do not know the procedure. I’m sure I did once.)

If the distance from 1st to 2nd is 90 feet, and the distance from 2nd to 3rd is 90 feet, then how can the distance from 1st to 3rd be 314 feet? Does that make sense?

Kid: No but that’s what the calculator said and I’m sure I did it right.

[/quote]

Right there is your problem.

He thinks of “doing math” as “following procedure”. He needs to UNDERSTAND things conceptually. The whole point of a mathematical education is to learn clear, objective, logical thinking; to understand why, not the how. This is particularly important to learn before High School.

I am not sure tutoring is the right way to get this across, as most tutoring services focus on test prep, i.e., drillwork, which doesn’t seem to be the problem here. It’s an attitude thing towards learning in general, and math in particular. Not “attitude” as in “effort”, as in a kid who needs pushing to do his homework, but an appreciation for why it’s important to be able to reason things out from first principles.

In other words, time to get Socratic on him (I guess you could find a Socratic tutor). Ask him leading questions and make him give you the answers, do not feed them to him, until he develops a desire to anticipate the next question with an answer ready in mind that is both testable and reasonable.

27

Unlimited tutoring for $99.99 a month, but I’m pretty sure it’s limited to phone calls and internet. No house calls at those rates:

My experience as a math student and as a parent tells me that practice is by far the most important thing. Much more important than understanding, IMHO. I’d buy as many books as possible from the following link and just make him practice as much as possible:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_m/002-4494425-4972017?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=math+word+problems

28

[QUOTE=Hilarity N. Suze]
It sure sounded like it.

I myself was ruined by New Math. Or possibly I just never had any aptitude, anyway.
[/QUOTE]

This answer should have gone to a different poster, ASAKMOTSD. I.e., was it Chicago Math.

(1) bad parent (2) flunks math (3) replies to wrong poster.

Bzzzttt!

29

[QUOTE=robardin]
Right there is your problem.

He thinks of “doing math” as “following procedure”. He needs to UNDERSTAND things conceptually. The whole point of a mathematical education is to learn clear, objective, logical thinking; to understand why, not the how. This is particularly important to learn before High School.

I am not sure tutoring is the right way to get this across, as most tutoring services focus on test prep, i.e., drillwork, which doesn’t seem to be the problem here. It’s an attitude thing towards learning in general, and math in particular. Not “attitude” as in “effort”, as in a kid who needs pushing to do his homework, but an appreciation for why it’s important to be able to reason things out from first principles.

In other words, time to get Socratic on him (I guess you could find a Socratic tutor). Ask him leading questions and make him give you the answers, do not feed them to him, until he develops a desire to anticipate the next question with an answer ready in mind that is both testable and reasonable.
[/QUOTE]

I think you’re right. If he knew the concept, he’d be able to estimate, and to figure out without my prompting that the answer is wrong.

But I think he needs to be able to do long division, too. The first math problem I mentioned he got the wrong answer via calculator; but the second time he was doing the figuring by hand.

30

[QUOTE=Hilarity N. Suze]
Right, but if you have just caught a grounder and tagged third, how far do you have to throw it to get the batter out at first?

(Okay, I don’t know a lot about baseball either.)
[/QUOTE]

You don’t. If you just tagged third then that means there had to be a runner at first and second, otherwise it’s not a force out. So you throw to second for the double play, unless the runner had a good jump and you don’t think you can get the throw in time. If you have to throw to first it’s probably about 120-125 feet, because you are moving towards first as you scoop up the ball and fire to the first baseman. This assumes that there was not a player at third and or no play at the plate.

31

[QUOTE=Hilarity N. Suze]

So as a double check of sorts I asked him how far it would be if we drilled straight through the center of the earth to the other side, supposing that the circumference of the earth is 24,000 miles. Again, he knew the procedure. Again–and this time without a calculator–he came up with a preposterous result. I mean obviously preposterous although this time with the decimal in the wrong place so it was 70,000 miles (or something like that). (Of course we have to add one extra mile since we live in Denver.)

“So, Kid, if you go around it’s 24,000 miles, if you go halfway around it’s 12,000 miles, and if you go straight through it’s 70,000 miles. Right?”

Kid gets perplexed look. Whatever the calculator says.
[/QUOTE]

The problem with that question is there’s really no good way to go straight through the center of the earth, as proven by the late Jules Verne. You’re going to take a circuitous path, fraught with peril, monsters, villians and what not.

32

[QUOTE=garygnu]
Is he using an HP calculator or something?
[/QUOTE]

One must never mock the HP. My HP 11C has been going strong on the same batteries for at least 17 years now, and its answers are never wrong.

33

[QUOTE=Hilarity N. Suze]
But I think he needs to be able to do long division, too. The first math problem I mentioned he got the wrong answer via calculator; but the second time he was doing the figuring by hand.
[/QUOTE]
And I’m still dying to know how division could possibly be involved in the OP’s problem.

34

[QUOTE=Thudlow Boink]
And I’m still dying to know how division could possibly be involved in the OP’s problem.
[/QUOTE]

Okay. The first problem was the base thing. The answer was messed up, I don’t know why. He was looking for the square root of something or another, but the answer was so far off that obviously he wasn’t paying attention. Or something.

So the next problem was drilling through the center of the earth, and this time, no calculator, because I wanted to see if he knew the math. And he didn’t. And still wasn’t paying attention. (This time off by a decimal point. But he knows what pi is and theoretically how to find the measurement we were after.)

Other tests followed. Dividing by a three-digit number–failed. Dividing by a two-digit number–failed. Dividing by a one-digit number–that one he knows.

35

[QUOTE=Boyo Jim]
So what you’re saying is that you intuitively know what the ballpark answer of a question like this should be, but you don’t remember the particular formula to determine the exact answer?

[/QUOTE]

“Ballpark”. :smiley:

What age are seventh-graders, that they don’t know about the square on the hypotenuse? I must’ve known the rule by the time I was eleven, though I sure didn’t know the proof (even though it’s easy).

36

Why is a 7th-grader using a calculator at all?

37

[QUOTE=Hilarity N. Suze]
It sure sounded like it.

I myself was ruined by New Math. Or possibly I just never had any aptitude, anyway.
[/QUOTE]

Me, too. My monthly checkbook balancing debacle is proof of that. I was, and still am, intimidated and confused by numbers of any sort.

38

The problem is not long division. Most people nowdays rarely use long division. Using a calculator for it is fine. The problem is that your son can’t visualize the problems he’s working on. Either you or a tutor need to teach your son how to visualize the problems he works on (and one of you also needs to find out why he’s misusing the calculator to get these wrong answers).

39

I have been told that the Chicago Math thing is less of a problem if you either (a) get the school to give you the Parent’s Guide (which they will apparently not do unless you demand it because it obviously costs them money) or (b) get a teacher that understands that there is more to life than teaching 4 different ways to achieve the answers without the child learning any one consistent method. Luckily, my 14 year old daughter got one of those teachers this year and she went from failing math last year back to an A grade this year.

In my opinion, Chicago math really sucks for everyone involved - except perhaps for the Chicago Math teachers who have perpetual job security. I say that because once you start the cycle, you can not easily have kids come in late or go back to a traditional math sequence because they only learn “slices” of each of the topics that are traditionally taught in order.

40

[QUOTE=Sofaspud]

As far as the math thing goes… I don’t know if it’s possible, but how about the good old fashioned method – an adult who learned it the proper way simply teaches him. It could be a friendly neighbor, his grandmother, you, who knows. I don’t think math is something that NEEDS a tutor for. If you can do your household budget, I think you can teach math at his level – especially with the aid of a few good textbooks.
[/QUOTE]

I’ve been thinking of getting a tutor for my son too…not because I can’t handle his fifth-grade math, but because he gets so frustrated he starts crying and yelling. Obviously he can do that with his family members, but if he was dealing with a stranger he’d suck it up and maybe learn something.