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by necovek 488 days ago
Sounds like a problem with your early math tutors: especially with geometry, all the examples you bring up have been taught with "what it means".

I mean, squares and cubes are just multiplication by the same factor: I distinctly remember even trapezoid surfaces, pyramid volumes being demonstrated by chopping and piecing parts together.
1 comments
mlyle 488 days ago
In the US especially, too many programs have an insistence that doing things with symbols and doing things with shapes and solids are completely different things and don't relate the two.
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necovek 488 days ago
Primary school programs? Secondary school programs?

I could understand that in high school and uni when you need to move past "intuitive" maths into abstractions, but I'd be perplexed if this is really the "program", and not just an individual teacher (and surely, a big chunk of them too)!

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mlyle 487 days ago
We've started to swing back towards visual and geometrical models with common core/new math.

But I have a big collection of math textbooks from all over the world, and math 6, pre-algebra and algebra texts in the US have far less geometrical content and pictures than the non-US equivalents that I have. I also think that the increased emphasis on getting students through standardized tests ended up dedicating a lot of class time towards rote with short term benefits.

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