# What exactly was the "new math"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [November 5, 2011, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-was-the-new-math/601936 "2011-11-05T05:42:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2011, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-was-the-new-math/601936/61 "2011-11-17T17:41:19Z")
Cue Isaac Asimov’s “half a piece of chalk” story. ---
**Author:** ![Powers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@Powers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Powers)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2011, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-was-the-new-math/601936/62 "2011-11-17T21:56:51Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > Imaginary numbers are the same kind of thing. You could calculate electrical field quantities and magnetic field quantities using separate rules - it would be terribly complicated, because they feed back into each other, but it would be possible, but instead, it was noticed that by inventing “complex numbers” you could combine the electrical and magnetic quantities into one number, and simplify your bookkeeping considerably. All right, but there’s got to be a concept behind it. Saying “magnetism is imaginary electricity” implies to me that squaring some measure of magnetic flux results in a negative current or voltage value, which just doesn’t make sense to me. Powers &8^] ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2011, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-was-the-new-math/601936/63 "2011-11-17T22:43:08Z")
I grew up in the New Math era, but sometimes I wonder if I got _enough_ New Math? As it appears to me, an important feature of New Math was to use physical representations of numbers like rods in lengths from one to ten inches; this was supposed to make it easier for the kids to understand how numbers work together. The same types of rods could be used to illustrate differences between squares or how to set up word problems. But we didn’t get all that. We did get _some_ of the New Math features, like expanded notation, but not much else. The third grade was nothing but ten pages of lengthy multiplication problems to be done nearly every night. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2011, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-was-the-new-math/601936/64 "2011-11-17T22:52:38Z")
> [@Powers](#): > > All right, but there’s got to be a concept behind it. Saying “magnetism is imaginary electricity” implies to me that squaring some measure of magnetic flux results in a negative current or voltage value, which just doesn’t make sense to me. > Powers &8^] Not quite, but you can describe an electromagnetic wave as a complex vector propagating through space, with the real part being the electric wave, and the imaginary part the magnetic wave. ---
**Author:** ![greenaum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ecb155/32.png) [@greenaum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/greenaum)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2011, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-was-the-new-math/601936/65 "2011-11-18T16:04:18Z")
> [@Yllaria](#): > > I remember hitting New Math in fourth grade and hating it, not for the concepts that encrusted the pages, those were kind of cool. It was all the tedius make-work that made me hide my math book. Expanding numbers to show that you were multplying 3 x 1000 + 4 x 100 + 2 x 10 + 1 times (and I’m not going to expand another one just for decoration) in order to get a feel for what digits actually meant is OK for one set of homework. But I get it already. I got it from reading about it. I don’t need to do this for weeks of essentially penmanship to drive the idea home. This was my problem at school. I was a very smart kid. I love learning, but I hate work. As you say, they’d teach us a concept, have us do a couple of exercises to prove the point and then lo! 4 more pages of EXACTLY THE SAME THING! If you didn’t get it the first couple of times, I don’t think it’s gonna hit you on the 18th. Maybe endless repetition did help some kids. I found I’d finish the first couple of exercises before anyone, then get bored and distracted and ending up in trouble for never finishing. I admit, I lack discipline, but then to a certain extent isn’t discipline forcing yourself to do something you don’t want to? And if the point of it is learning, I’ve already learned! Anyway, to precis, I hated school. This was in the late 80s / early 90s in Britain. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-was-the-new-math/601936.md?page=3)