From https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/14phpbq/how_is_it_possible_that_roughly_50_of_americans/

Question above is pretty blunt but was doing a study for a college course and came across that stat. How is that possible? My high school sucked but I was well equipped even with that sub standard level of education for college. Obviously income is a thing but to think 1 out of 5 American adults is categorized as illiterate is…astounding. Now poor media literacy I get, but not this. Edit: this was from a department of education report from 2022. Just incase people are curious where that comes from. It does also specify as literate in English so maybe not as grim as I thought.

  • yaaaaayPancakes@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Does she understand the concept of multiplication though? That’s ultimately the important part.

    Learning rote things like multiplication tables seems kinda silly in a world where Google can just do the math for you. But the important thing is to be able to recognize when multiplication is useful.

    • astronaut_sloth@mander.xyz
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      1 year ago

      Exactly. I didn’t learn multiplication tables, but instead, my teachers taught what multiplication was and how to do it. Sure, after practicing how to do it I memorized a lot of basic math facts, but it was more important that I understand what I was doing rather than just knowing that 9×5=45. Then again, my parents saw the sorry state of public schools (both teachers) and made sure that I was sent to a decent private school after seeing the travesty of the local public school’s reading curriculum.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      There are still plenty of instances where doing arithmetic quickly in your head is useful (figuring out a tip at the cash register, for example) that memorizing it can have advantages.

      • yaaaaayPancakes@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I agree that mental math is useful, but in scenarios like that, times tables aren’t really useful since the tables are rotely memorized and rarely does a bill fall nicely into a times table.

        Better to learn a technique like “move the decimal place left one position and double that number to get 20%”.

        But realistically, with a phone in your pocket, it’s not much more effort to pull it out and use the calculator.