Calling Math Nerds for Basic Arithmetic....

[Valka D'Ur]

6 x 9 = 42 in base 13. Maybe that's part of the meta-joke.

I had a button that said that (of course the base 13 part was in a very small font so it wasn't immediately noticeable). It was prominently displayed on my filing cabinet where the typing customers (mostly college/university students) could see it. It was quite amusing sometimes, to see how some of them reacted.

Most didn't, a couple got the joke and one guy had either never heard of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, or he had absolutely no sense of humor.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I think this is a better test of ability to ten key than ability to do math.

 

[Harv]

I don't get this - 120 seconds and I get to do stuff like 384:6 multiple times. I tried this game 3 times and got my best score around 16. Since I teach math and I do multiplication in my head daily, 16 to your 65 seems way off.

How old are the kids you teach? Based on what you said, 10 to 12.

By 65, I meant relative to myself and not relative to everybody else. That is when it feels like a rough run and I feel every delay and mistake.

From playing this a lot, I have learned much. Addition is much easier than subtraction for some reason. I believe this is because I have a lot of addition facts (no idea what that is in your native language) memorized, but subtraction past a certain range has to be staged and calculated. For very similar reasons, multiplication is much easier than division. I also make a lot of mistakes when I am typing in answers very quickly. I type something in and bonk myself on the head. That was silly.

Also tricks and hacks: Given that you teach arithmetic, it is very likely you know a lot of them. One trick is multiplying a two-digit number by 11. Add the digits and place the result in the middle. So 42 x 11 = 462. You have to "carry" the 1 if you get a result of 10 or more. So 47 x 11 = 517. Division works similarly. (Interestingly, it was only in the past couple of months I learned that if an integer is divisible by 11, the alternating sum is divisible by 11. So for 517, the alternating sum is 5 - 1 + 7 = 11.)

See a little further below for somebody who just kicked my butt!

First attempt... 32.

I'm sure I could get it higher if I started practicing everyday now, instead of being lazy. Train my brain and get it back into the highly efficient (in relative terms) calculation machine it once was.

But why would I? Hooray for shameless laziness.

Well played! The first time I tried, I got about 40, then 29, then 32 or something like that. So I would agree if you give it some obsessive practice, you will get much better!

I got 93 on my first try.

Well played!!!

I just knew if I checked in on CivFanatics, I would find somebody who kicks my butt at this game!

I think this is a better test of ability to ten key than ability to do math.

Yeah. Keying numbers plays a big role in this. One way to prove it would be to set it to multiplication only, multiplying numbers from 1 to 1200 by 1 and that will show how fast you can key numbers.

The next set of tests I am thinking of would be addition only, subtraction only, multiplication only, and division only. That will show which ones stump me the most. Another fun one to try might be subtraction only with a certain range to see what range is retrieved the most quickly.

EDIT:

I just checked. Sample size is one.
84 Addition, 64 Subtraction, 56 Multiplication, 62 Division

Average 66.5

So addition is quick and multiplication needs work.

 

[dusters]

How old are the kids you teach? Based on what you said, 10 to 12.

.

I teach 6th grade to 12th grade. I guess if I get several divisions with 3 digit numbers and I can't do them faster than 10 sec in my head, I'm not using the tricks you mentioned.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Yeah. Keying numbers plays a big role in this. One way to prove it would be to set it to multiplication only, multiplying numbers from 1 to 1200 by 1 and that will show how fast you can key numbers.

Well played! The first time I tried, I got about 40, then 29, then 32 or something like that. So I would agree if you give it some obsessive practice, you will get much better!

That was a creative way to remove the arithmetic and turn it into a ten key test. The tougher proposition being to remove the ten key aspect and get an actual arithmetic test. I say that because I'm curious whether 'some obsessive practice' is actually improving the math skills, or just the ten key skills. My instinct is that finger dexterity is more likely improving than mental here.

 

[Harv]

That was a creative way to remove the arithmetic and turn it into a ten key test. The tougher proposition being to remove the ten key aspect and get an actual arithmetic test. I say that because I'm curious whether 'some obsessive practice' is actually improving the math skills, or just the ten key skills. My instinct is that finger dexterity is more likely improving than mental here.

Well, I changed the settings to multiplication only, 2 to 9 times 2 to 9. Since I have that table memorized, we now have a test of the extent of my ability to access memory and key numbers correctly. I typically get a little over 120 and the last time I tried, I got 135. This is no significant increase over when I started, so based on that, it is arithmetic skills getting better with practice more so than ten key skills.

We can make a very interesting model for how many problems get solved in two minutes.

A lot of skills come into play. Accurate keying is one of them. Memory recall is another. Failing the instant memory recall, is there a shortcut trick and how quickly can we access that? After that, it is down to how quickly can we solve the problem by brute force.

Then there is getting stumped! Key in a wrong number and try again. How long does it take to recognize the mistake and move on?

Then there is psychology? Getting stumped several times in a row hurts! So does knowing the score is not going to be good. How well do we recover?

I am learning so much from playing this silly game! I have also become much more sympathetic towards people who struggle more with this.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

That's a ten percent increase on something where theoretically no improvement in "math skill" was going to have any effect. How you pass it off as "no significant increase" is a reasonable question.

Because of a job I once had I was once pretty skilled with a ten key. Skilled enough to know that right now I am not skilled. I am absolutely confident that I could double my scores, at least, just by restoring my ten key skills to their previous level. In the course of doing that I may also increase my basic arithmetic skills; maybe a little, maybe a lot.

 

[Harv]

That's a ten percent increase on something where theoretically no improvement in "math skill" was going to have any effect. How you pass it off as "no significant increase" is a reasonable question.

Okay. There are many skills in play aside from arithmetic skill. Accurate keying on a numeric keypad is one of them. Reaction time is another. Strategy is another. Right now, I am not going to list them. All skills involved become more efficient with practice.

A score of 135 on a two-minute test of the (2 to 9) times (2 to 9) multiplication table, I get an average of 2.15 accurate keystrokes per second. This is based on 135 correct answers and an average of 1.90625 digits per answer in the multiplication table. (6 out of 64 combinations have an single-digit answer.)

Breaking down the tables in the default settings:

Addition: (2 to 100) plus (2 to 100) for 9801 combinations I get:
21 single digit answers
4635 double digit answers
5145 triple digit answers
2.52 average digits

Subtraction is the above addition problem in reverse, so
8 single digit answers
90 double digit answers
1 triple digit answer
1.93 average digits

Multiplication (2 to 12) times (2 to 100) for 1089 combinations I get:
6 single digit answers
187 double digit answers
868 triple digit answers
28 quadruple digit answers
2.84 average digits

The overall average I get is 2.3 digits per answer.

Going back to my result of 135 for the times table, I get 135 x 1.090625 / 2.3 = 112. This is currently the most I can get if I assume every answer is memorized and I key it in.

This analysis also strongly suggests that the person getting 153 has far superior skill with the keypad. I would also say he has the entire matrix memorized.
(Google zetamac high scores. It's on YouTube.)
-------------------------

My current PR is 83. My second day PR was 60. Yes, some of this increase is due to improved skill with the numeric keypad. And yes, not all of this increase is due to improvement in arithmetic skill. However, I would still say that a lot of this increase is due to getting a lot more sharp and a lot less rusty at arithmetic.

 

[stfoskey12]

I got 29 on my first try. I don't see the point in getting really good at the game as I don't need to do multi-digit mental math fast practically ever.