Bwahahaha…

‘kay, so, after I wrote the below “New Math” post, it occurred to me that I’m not really clear on the difference between New Math and old math.

I just know that our kids were told to visualize, or in early grades, actually physically employ, little wooden props consisting of single blocks for ones, bars of 10 units for “base tens”, sheets of 100 units for a hundred, etc, etc. This drove them ruddy crazy and made what they could normally do in their head without any effort seem complicated and disassociated. We all felt better once I told them to ignore the instructions but learn how to put the answer in proper form to get the marks. But I digress….

Curiosity piqued, I did a quick google search on “new math”, and found an explanation at the frequently entertaining Straight Dope website. But what I particularly enjoyed was this summary:

The following examples may help to clarify the difference between the new and old math.

1960: A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of this price. What is his profit?

1970 (Traditional math): A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80. What is his profit?

1975 (New Math): A logger exchanges a set L of lumber for a set M of money. The cardinality of set M is 100 and each element is worth $1.
(a) make 100 dots representing the elements of the set M
(b) The set C representing costs of production contains 20 fewer points than set M. Represent the set C as a subset of the set M.
(c) What is the cardinality of the set P of profits?

1990 (Dumbed-down math): A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80 and his profit is $20. Underline the number 20.

1997 (Whole Math): By cutting down a forest full of beautiful trees, a logger makes $20.
(a) What do you think of this way of making money?
(b) How did the forest birds and squirrels feel?
(c) Draw a picture of the forest as you’d like it to look.