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Comment I keep mine as long a support continues (Score 1) 166

As long as the vendor (Apple/Google/whoever) is continuing to release updates and patches, with very few exceptions, I don't bother upgrading the device. If there is a hardware fault or the battery is significantly degraded and it's a hassle to repair, that will also trigger an "upgrade" for me. Otherwise, I could care less about the latest whizzbang feature, "AI capabilities," etc.

Comment Re:The talented ones can (Score 1) 259

Thus 5x3 becomes 5x5x5 or 3x3x3x3x3 instead of "STFU and memorize your times tables."

I'm fine with the repeated addition. My objection is the OR in your statement. Apparently not. The question was 5x3 and the kid wrote 5+5+5=15 and got marked wrong with no explanation because the teacher wanted 3+3+3+3+3=15. So I guess that you would have had a 50% chance of being marked wrong on a 2nd grade arithmatic worksheet as well, as absurd as that is. Correct answer notwithstanding.

BTW, that's not at all new. We covered multiplication that way in the 3rd grade back in 1975. Memorizing the table was just to make it quicker. I quickly "discovered" the commutative property while looking at the multiplication table and cut my memorization load in half. The part that confused the father was why is 5x3 = 5+5+5=15 "wrong".

As for 37+55, we decomposed that in the '70s as well, but I soon decided the easier decomposition was 37+55= 87+5 = 90+2=92. So I would say that meme was just someone wanting to complain. Of course the "old way" ends up in 30+50+10+2 anyway.

Shut up and memorize was not in practice during the education of the parents of today's students.

Comment Re: We're in the group (Score -1, Troll) 214

In many cases we ARE paying a lot for a good education, but we're also not getting the desired outcome in many cases. I took my kids out of public school (in one of the richest school districts in the country) for similar reasons to the OP above. They spent much of their time in class being bored and actively sandbagged by their teachers. On top of that was all the contrived "woke" indoctrination nonsense. They were already getting good grades, but now they are learning significantly faster and actually enjoy the process more.

Best thing we ever did.

Comment Re:The talented ones can (Score 1) 259

It was my example. It came from a photograph of the worksheet posted to Reddit by the child's father, who was wondering why the answer was 'wrong'.

Surely you don't expect the 2nd graders to start on Clifford algebras any time soon. They need to learn to walk before they run. Note that by the time you're multiplying vectors and matrices the process involved is sufficiently different from multiplying real numbers that not being commutative is not going to be an issue. I recall my high school math teacher demonstrating non-commutative multiplication. I was not confused in spite of having figured out the commutative nature of simple multiplication in elementary school.

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