Yes I think fractions cause people as many problems as these other "more advanced" ideas. I've seen students in calc 2 who still had messy ideas about fractions. It's not trivial and just because we teach some of it to 5th graders doesn't mean everyone knows how they work.
https://sauropods.win/@futurebird/113526304383096146
@futurebird Let me guess:
you see {N/D}'==N'/D' used, a mistake familiar to me when grading.
@futurebird
Unless there's some deeper aspect I'm overlooking, I think fractions always made intuitive sense to me. Just the idea that a quantity of something can be proportionately associated […]
@futurebird Apropos of fractions, there's a brilliant scene in the Isao Takahata film _Omohide Poro Poro_ in which a young girl expresses frustration at the notion that dividing by 1/4 is a […]
@futurebird
when I was in college I tutored many other students, and I had to keep a list of common misconceptions about fractions and how to address them with me. It's especially bad in […]
@futurebird Proofs. I simply cannot understand how simple an axiom is supposed to be to start with or how to get from one axiom to another; why the first “proves” the second, third, and so […]
@futurebird I was in a "math/physics/informatics" profiled class, and our math teacher was an absolute legend. Friends who went on to study math easily coasted on what they learned in high […]
@futurebird I get fractions because I worked doing lots of carpentry and construction for years
@futurebird I get fractions now, but I changed schools mid-year that year. The old school hadn't gotten to them yet, the new school had already finished them, and my teacher assigned another […]
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