Professor: Fractions should be scrapped

By Maureen Milford, USA TODAY
PHILADELPHIA — A few years ago, Dennis DeTurck, an award-winning professor of mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania, stood at an outdoor podium on campus and proclaimed, "Down with fractions!"

"Fractions have had their day, being useful for by-hand calculation," DeTurck said as part of a 60-second lecture series. "But in this digital age, they're as obsolete as Roman numerals are."

The speech started a firestorm, particularly after the university posted it online.

"There were blogs and rants, and there were some critical e-mails," said DeTurck, who is now dean of the college of arts and sciences at Penn. "They'd always boil down to: 'What would we do in cooking and carpentry?' "

DeTurck is stirring the pot again, this time in a book scheduled to be published this year. Not only does he favor the teaching of decimals over fractions to elementary school students, he's also taking on long division, the calculation of square roots and by-hand multiplication of long numbers.

"Mathematicians are always questioning the axioms. Everybody knows that questioning those often results in the most substantial gains in terms of progress," he says.

Questioning the wisdom of teaching fractions to young students doesn't compute with people such as George Andrews, a professor of mathematics at Pennsylvania State University and president-elect of the American Mathematical Society. "All of this is absurd," Andrews said. "No wonder mathematical achievements in the country are so abysmal.

"Arithmetic is the basic skill. If children do not know arithmetic, they can't go on to algebra, which leads to calculus. From there you go on to other things," Andrews said. "It's fine to talk about it, but this is not a good pedagogy."

Others see value in both fractions and decimals. To Janine Remillard, associate professor of education at Penn, the decimal system is "incredibly powerful." And fractions can be a powerful steppingstone to understanding decimals, she says.

"Fractions, if taught well — and that's a huge caveat — can actually help kids understand the value of the size of the pieces," Remillard says.

DeTurck does not want to abolish the teaching of fractions and long division altogether. He believes fractions are important for high-level mathematics and scientific research. But it could be that the study of fractions should be delayed until it can be understood, perhaps after a student learns calculus, he said. Long division has its uses, too, but maybe it doesn't need to be taught as intensely.

Penn State mathematician Andrews says he believes DeTurck's ideas will "unfortunately" gain traction because of the misguided belief that math education can somehow be made easy:

"Math is hard. The idea that somehow we're going to make math just fun is just a dream."

i like fractions.

benzaldehyde makes me want almond tofu. ochem lab was so enjoyable today.

hi my name is internal energy. in chemistry, i am written as U. in physics and engineering, i am E. in chemistry, they like to add up my work and heat. because the work is the work that i did. not what the world did on me. in physics, they do my heat minus the work. because the work is the work that the world did on me to increase my energy. and i think i got that backwards. because it is so confusing. why don't they just add them all up, and let it think the way it is. no more memorizing.

the dog is mine. the dog has pups, so it is a father. the dog is mine and it is a father. therefore, the dog is my father. it's brilliant logic. bow down to me.

drink lots of water. it is healthy. rehydrates. allows more metabolism. lubricates. does everything. too bad it autoionizes and makes acid and base. and does amphoteric stuff. buffers. not really. pKa 15 point something. i think. do not understand.

for 7 years of existence, of only about 5 of which i knew about, rammstein's mutter album is still the best 45 minutes, 11 seconds ever created. all 11 songs are almost flawless. it is so great.

omgomgomgomg. so soon.

some guy from brokeback mountain died. didn't really like that movie. was quite hyped because it was so omg controversial. oh well. i guess that is what sells. controversy and advertising. like that cloverfield movie. it's so mysterious because it wasn't really titled! until they did. and then everyone is like zomg its a movie where a guy is filming a movie and then he died and thats all they have left! so silly. but now its like one of the top grossing movies of all. so gross. like dead animals.

and it is raining outside.

its not like there's anything to say. nothing to try to say anyways. it's just a wasted effort. boring boring everyday. study study until death. not at all. there are lots of things to enjoy. like playing all day. and enjoying life. the present is all that matters. nothing else matters. why care about the future? it's so unpredictable. i exist now. that is what is important. that's why i should be as unproductive as possible. because at least i know it's not a wasted investment. too bad there is some certainty of the future. and investment is always good. unless there is a recession. but life doesn't really have a recession. only emotionally? physically? but not life. there's no inflation in life. there are no bubbles. nothing to be popped.

He didn't dress well, he didn't pretend to be one of them. The people that ran that place, they didn't think that he had anything they wanted. Except when they needed him. Because he was right. Which meant that nothing else mattered. They had to listen to him.

- House

run into a wall. then get over it. then fall down. then get up. find another wall. go around it. and see more walls. walls everywhere. getting over walls. falling off of walls. its no fun. walls block the view. can't even see where one is going. it's just trying doors. except it's walls. that is harder. directionless. and everything is fine.

fonts are still ugly here (in the typing area. not what you see). but they are okay looking in wikipedia. so it depends on which one i will spend more time on. typing posts or reading wikipedia. probably wiki. since that is the source of all knowledge. it's hard to fit in, so just don't fit in. i guess. it's fine. doesn't matter anyways. because everyone is dead. don't go down in sorrow. that is what 65daysofstatic told me. good advice. everyone would follow it. then there wouldn't be annoying people in this world. but doesn't going down mean sad, sorrow, depressing, negative verbs like that? can you go down in happiness? only up. not down.

a post for today. before i decide to shutdown and go cry in the corner.

anyways. apparently theres a link from freeliveporno.org to my site/blog, or something. it says people have been linked to my site 4 times this month from there. that is what my web analyzer thing tells me. i'm not really going to go check. or maybe i will. but you know. it's kind of weird. it's like backwards. usually the internet is tricky and harmless links trick people into going to porn sites. but then if someone was at freeliveporno.org, they must be watching some porn. why would they suddenly want to visit a blog!? so it must be backwards. a harmless porn link, turns out to be the opposite. and how pleasant it is to be my wonderful almost daily ramblings.

also, the fonts on linux are weird. i installed something for chinese stuff and then it changed my english fonts to ugly. but it's okay. its just like notepad all day. i like monospace type fonts. because i'm ugly.

i really suck at sudoku. but it is okay. because i don't like that game that much anyways. i only like tetris. that is a fun game. sudoku is no no.

first day of school. was quite interesting. some are very excited about topics. some aren't as much. and some are just neh. only 3 classes today. different from the usual 4 straight classes that i had last 3 semesters. usually its 8 am to 2 pm. but now its 9:30 am to 2 pm. which means i can wake up later. and lose that extra time i would have had. since the 4th class is still there. just on a different day. annoying schedules. i wish classes would be early. oh well. hopefully weather is okay tomorrow. want to go swimming.

KMT won taiwan parliament election. by a lot. means more good chinese trade. and probably reunification. good? bad? don't know. we'll see. also have to wait for presidential election. but KMT will probably win that also. so yea. the end. hopefully china kills off all that bad music that taiwan makes. china should go for vietnam next. theres 1 million chinese people there.

just listened to like the best music that has come out of taiwan. (which doesn't say much. most [all] of it is just sugary and/or unoriginal). but what even more amazing is that it is somewhat mainstream, somewhat. the music was in some drama, so it must be mainstream. anyways. its a debut of some girl named 王若琳 (joanna wang). is quite good. cd was released today, in taiwan. so yesterday here. i had more to say about this album. but theres nothing to say. oh yea. shes same age as me. lols. only 2 months and a few days more. how do people get scouted so early in life. taiwan is weird.

Website

rubella is funny. its like attacking kids. so they make vaccines for the kids. and now adults that get rubella have increased. oh well. as long as they dont attack babies.

somehow it reminds me of babycakes. so tasty. forgot what that article was about. eating babies? thats a modest proposal. maybe babycakes. i dont know. just remember people didn't like it.

WARSAW (Reuters) - A Polish man got the shock of his life when he visited a brothel and spotted his wife among the establishment's employees. Polish tabloid Super Express said the woman had been making some extra money on the side while telling her husband she worked at a store in a nearby town.

"I was dumfounded. I thought I was dreaming," the husband told the newspaper Wednesday.

The couple, married for 14 years, are now divorcing, the newspaper reported.

(Writing by Chris Borowski, Editing by Matthew Jones)

© Reuters 2008. All Rights Reserved.

lolol. hes there. and shes there. so fun.

i want school to start.
i need things to do.
i want to learn to program and script and nonsense.
i am busy/lazy.
i guess i don't really want to learn then.
i am jealous of people who can though.
oh well.

i spent way too much time today playing with foobar2000. it is like the best thing in the world. play with all the plugins and make it look cool too. its satisfies how much i want to program. its not really programming, but whatever. thats why i should switch to linux. because it doesn't have cool programs like foobar2000. unless it works well in WINE (some run windows in linux thing). which supposedly it is getting pretty good in WINE. hopefully.

knife vacation! sounds funny. especially in an asian accent. nife vekayshun. but i guess thats now it sounds like anyways. silent k anyways. tion shounds like shun. kind of. things sound the same.

BIG NEWS! apparently ayumi hamasaki is half deaf now. her left ear had some problems and she can't hear from it anymore. kind of bad because she is a singer. but whatever. she will pull through somehow. she has lots of money anyways, i think. but yea. no good. but this explains why all her music sucks now. can't hear it.

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apparently all the rain right now makes up for all the lack of rain during november and december. which is good i guess. but why does it have to be all at once!? annoying. it is almost filling up my pond in the backyard. so sad. reminds me that my ducks flew away and never came back. annoying birds. they were cool birds. they followed people around. too bad they defecated everywhere. uric acid.

omg is shiina ringo the only person with crazy music followers? like. people play her music backwards all the time. and try to find stuff. because she samples herself all the time. and she has a song called "ringo catalogue" when she quit doing solo stuff. and it sampled a lot of her songs. and so people broke it down. and found almost all except like 4. its quite amazing. they have the times of each song sample. and these people also run her music through a spectrum analyser and find that theres "xxx" in honnou. and that xxx part is at the same part where shes kissing some girl in the music video. wowow. and people find all these things in the videos and stuff. i dont even think shiina ringo knows half of these things. maybe she does. but wowow. i feel like such a bad fan. so i'm listening to doppelganger backwards. and its quite cool, but weird. she also has a song which has backwards lyrics with another song.

apparently, ring around the rosies is not about the bubonic/black plague. they only have evidence that ring around the rosies rhyme existed in 1881. nothing earlier. so either the plague killed of all the evidence for a few centuries, or it just doesn't relate.

its raining like crazy. and water is leaking through my window. its magic. liquid crossing through solids. happens sometimes. if melting and freezing are at the same rate, at equilibrium, but not now. its water and glass. or plastic. whatever they make windows out of. i think glass. anyways its annoying. water coming in. drowning me. its a flood inside my room.

i went to the dentist today. he cleaned my teeth. then he was like lets scan your face. so he scanned my face. and apparently i dont have any wisdom teeth on the top. and i never got them removed. i guess my top teeth are just retarded. and he says i should just get my bottom ones removed because its not fully done yet. so just kill them off early. weird stuff. useless teeth that grow retarded. or dont grow at all.

i was going to post earlier today. like at around 1. but then i had the window open with nothing to type. so i closed it. now i'm reopening it and i still have nothing to type. so i guess i will just inform you that even though i failed with a quality update, i still made an effort. since effort is the most important thing in grading now. we are all being judged. you are judging me for being a good updater. and i'm judging you for wasting your time. grades are important. need some objective measurement. judgement is important. dont want to waste time with nonsense. but if its nonsense with a lot of effort then its okay. makes sense. of course. everything makes sense.

cool-ish weird art.

Geraldine Georges

new year. should make a meaningful post. but its hard. new year resolutions. do better in school. do better in life. do better in everything. i guess. such vague resolutions. i could just do slightly better and it will be still met. i need to set numbers and standards and stuff like that. but that is too much work. maybe resolution should be to do more work. but how can that be defined?