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Brett Schafer's avatar

An interesting comment I’ve heard is that we, English speakers, learn to read left to right …then, when we’ve barely mastered that skill, attempt to learn maths that reads right to left.

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Craig's avatar

Toss out everything and teach kindergartners Euclidian geometry. With that we can teach all of arithmetic, introduce algebra, logic, and proof.

Math instruction as we know it is designed to make kids hate math and think they're bad at it. See: the results.

No other subject is approached like this. Few people know you can multiply and divide with triangles. Fewer people know a triangle is all you need to create Chaos mathematics. Very few people have ever seen a strange attractor, and almost no one appreciates the joy and beauty of math.

Most people think that math is arithmetic, calculation, and computation. This is horrifying. Mathematics is the art of ideas. God forbid we treat it with reverence and appreciate it, because it's literally as essential to thinking itself as water is to a fish.

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