[ern]

If it is an April fool, then it is not entirely off the mark as satire. It isn't uncommon to see reviews of apps like Dragonbox and Slice Fractions where bloggers claim "my 5 year old can do algebra"[] or "my 3 year old can do fractions".

[] My son could play Dragonbox when he was 3, so I am not knocking the game, but I am skeptical it will be of much use when he does algebra in school.

[zecho]

My 5-year old daughter played through Dragonbox pretty quickly and afterward I went through some concepts with her like x/x = 1 or 1x = x.

When shown to her using fractions of a drawn circle or simple multiplication of real objects, she seemed to understand the concept in the abstract.

However, once I introduced something like ayx/yx = a, it seemed to trip her up, even though the motions in Dragonbox made sense to her.

That said, I'm not sure I understood why x/x = 1 until much after 5 years old, so maybe there's something to be said about going through the motions of computation before truly understanding the general concept.