Speed versus accuracy in math

Just go read this very interesting story at Ragamuffin Studies blog: Taming the speed demon.

Comments

Kelly said…
Thanks for the link! It was a great read!
10:08 PM, October 28, 2007
Anonymous said…
Hi,

Thanks for the reference. Nice read.

I appreciate and enjoy your dedication to teaching an sharing Math.

I commented the following on Ragamuffin's blog. Your readers might be interested in as well:

-----------------------------------
Hi,

Your post was very touching.

I've always been very good at Math but certainly not the quickest at doing arithmetic.

A couple of comments that may be helpful to you and others:

1. Mathematical reasoning and doing arithmetic quickly are not the same skill. Arithmetic is largely an algorithmic mechanical process. Some people can mechanically process data more quickly than others. Others can do abstract reasoning better but not do so well at arithmetic. Einstein was a prime example of this. He could come up with brilliant formulas but then needed help to do the calculations.

2. Making arithmetic errors can have different causes and different solutions. I realize that making errors in calculation is different than being able to do arithmetic quickly.

I have a couple of articles I've written on my blog, WildAboutMath.com that may be of interest:

Good storytelling ability related to good mathematical skills. This article touches on how Math is different from arithmetic although it's not the main focus of the article.

How to get past "stupid" Math mistakes. This one discusses some possibilities for where errors in calculation come from and ways to address them.

Sol
2:34 PM, November 12, 2007
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