First of all, an announcement. Or maybe it's more of a confession. Okay. My old phone let me have as many text messages saved in my Inbox as I wanted. My new phone will not. And my new phone had maybe told me that my Inbox was full a couple days ago but um, I never did anything about it. Until tonight. Tonight I started deleting stuff in my Inbox and all of a sudden I had 10 new messages. Oops. So, if you're someone that sent me a text message since like... Sunday-ish? Sorry that I never responded.
Now. Counting the dots. A bunch of you asked what it is. Sorry for my poor job of illustrating the concept in Paint but, it's kinda like this:
So, the child sees 8 + 4. In order to find the answer, they count four "dots" on the number (they're usually imaginary)-- "9, 10, 11, 12" and know that the answer is 12. I think that if you didn't learn it growing up, it doesn't really seem like it'd be that helpful. If you did learn it when you were little, it makes complete sense and you don't know why the rest of us think it's weird.
I just have one question though for everyone that learned it-- Where are the dots on a 9?
Halloween in New Zealand
11 years ago
6 comments:
More questions:
How many dots are on 1?
Where are the dots on 5,6,7,8,9?
Seems like an incredibly flawed system.
Nine is like this:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Z9UDFm1anjE/SOTZHUcw9fI/AAAAAAAAArI/eUynVfkC9Gw/s1600-h/nine.bmp
There is, remarkably, one dot on a one. On a five they are on all corners and one on the middle of the bump. seven has one on top, three on the spine and three more off to the side of the spine (like unto the nine), eight has four on the bump and four off those dots again.
How did they teach you without the dots?
I'm with curious physics minor. This system makes no sense, even with jamcrazy's insane explanation!
I learned how to count the old fashioned way: "If I have five apples and add six, how many do I have total?" I put five x's on paper, then six, then count them all together.
This sort of stuff is exactly why I haven't taken a math class since trigonometry my junior year of high school.
No kidding! And they expect kids to understand this?!
Love the dots. Thanks for the demonstration.
Random question: Jessica, out of curiosity, do you know what color skin Vanilla Ice had? (and no, this is not a trick question or some sort of joke/riddle)
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