Specifically the addition and subtraction part of it.
In: 19
It’s hard to show in words I’d need a math problem and a piece of paper. But it was far simpler and straight forward.
“New” math attempts to account for multiple ways people learn which in theory is great, but it’s not really practical.
I think they should teach you all the different ways and allow you to do everything in the way that works best for you as an individual.
Old math: Add the 1s column, if it’s greater than 9, carry the 1, add it to the tens column, add the 10s column, carry the 1 if needed.
New math: Add the 10s, add the 1s. If adding the 1s is greater than 9, repeat.
New math is the way most people add numbers in their head. Makes mental math and paper math consistent. Old math is easier for dealing with more than 2 digit numbers.
Old Math has a lot more memorization involved.
New Math tries to show why the math works so that people can visualize and understand it more easily.
“New Math” was a thing from the 1950s and mostly gone by the 1960s. Prior to this, math classes didn’t have a unified curriculum although you’d probably start by memorizing addition and multiplication tables.
New Math attempted to introduce underlying mathematical theory earlier in learning arithmetic. If you didn’t learn to add and subtract in multiple different bases, you didn’t learn New Math. The idea was to get kids started as early as possible on understanding that a quantity is not the same as the symbol that represents that quantity. It didn’t work well.
Pardon the lack of formatting. I’m on mobile, and I’m not fluent in reddit yet.
Say you wished to add 789 three times.
You’d write:
789
789
+789
—-
Add the three 9s and you get 27. Bring down the 7, put 2 at the top of the next column.
2
789
789
+789
—-
7
Add the three 8s plus the 2 and you get 26. Bring down the 6, put the 2 at the top of the next column.
22
789
789
+789
—-
67
Add the three 7s plus the 2 and you get 23. Since there is no other column, bring the whole thing down and you are at 2367.
For subtraction, let’s say you have 951 minus 762. You’d write:
951
-762
—-
You’d subtract the first columns. 9-7=2. Easy peasy.
951
-762
—-
2
Now, you can’t subtract 6 from 5 because 6 is larger than 5, so now you have to borrow 10 from the 2 from the previous step, and now you have 15-6 = 9.
9 15 1
-7 6 2
– – – – – –
1 9
You’re left with 1 minus 2 which isn’t allowed, so you have to borrow again, but I think you understand how the rest works.
This is what was meant by “New Math” in the 60s. Not sure if you’re asking out that or common core math, which is a new new math.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIKGV2cTgqA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIKGV2cTgqA)
My mom was in college when the shift happened and she said that the “New Math” was pretty much the same thing as the “Old Math.” She and I can understand each other’s longhand arithmetic, but when she says an equation out loud she uses baffling prepositions “and” “into” “from” “by” that I can comprehend, but I have to spend several seconds converting those words into “plus” “minus” “divided by” “times”
They draw little cars and put the numbers in as passengers, lol. I had to help my nephew with it once, I don’t remember exactly how it worked but I was able to figure it out pretty quickly, it was elementary school arithmetic after all
First, the terms are largely meaningless. People just say “new math” to mean whatever they want from a teaching a political standpoint. There is no widespread understanding of what new math is.
That said, new math is largely incorrectly thought to be Common Core and is usually Singapore Math.
Common Core is not a new math or new way of teaching math. It is a set of standards for testing if kids understand math. It does not specify how math is to be taught. However, for political reasons a lot of people attack Common Core as a whole and therefore claim that the confusing new math is Common Core.
However, “new math” is usually Singapore Math. Singapore Math is a way of teaching math that became popular in Singapore in the 80s and then was adopted in other countries. It became widely adopted in the U.S. in the 2000’s.
Old math was generally rote memorization. Kids were taught 2+3=5 and to memorize that. But Singapore Math teaches kids why 2+3=5 so that they understand how math works.
Singapore math teaches students mathematical concepts in a three-step learning process: concrete, pictorial, and abstract
Back in the day there was only one way to do math. Today with Common Core, you are taught multiple ways to solve a problem. Some people are more visual learners and tape diagrams are easier to remember than rote memorization. They put the methods into smaller bites and encourage students to work in small groups. It’s actually refreshing and I wish it was part of my “back in the day” math learning. It was painful back then. I’m homeschooling my grandson and I’m learning stuff with a whole new light.
I’m 60 years old and in 4th grade our math teacher taught us “old division” before teaching us the “new math” division. In old math division, you write the number you are trying to divide and guess how many times it will go into the number. Then you multiply it out. If it over, you guess lower, if it’s under, you subtract it from your first number and start over. At the end, when it comes out even, or you do not have enough left to go into it, even one time, you add up all the number from all the guesses, and the remainder, if you have one.
That is old division. I don’t remember any other “old math”, except my mother did not know how to do the “new math” division. She only knew the way I just discribed.
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