Long Multiplication on the Menu
Thursday July 9, 2009
When I was learning to do long multiplication, I learned the traditional method, or so I thought. The traditional method depends on who's doing the teaching and where you are doing the learning. There are a few ways of doing long multiplication and I only just discovered these methods in the last decade. So if you're struggling to teach a young one how to do long multiplication, it may be time to change up the method. There's Napier's Method, the Box Method and the Russian Method. After all, the only thing that is important is that the student understands the concept, so pick your method wisely.
And if summer is the time to help those young ones learn multiplication, check out the resource section.
Comments
Deb, Thanks for a nice explanation of several methods for calculating products. It was easy to follow the procedures.
Did you read Keith Devlin’s three posts on multiplication at his blog at the MAA.org site last year? There were also some lively discussions at other math blogs in response to Devlin’s posts. I looked at your multiplication resources and did not find anything on the concept. Do you have any posts on the concept of what multiplication is? Thanks.
interesting. thanks for posting this
Very interesting! In Germany, we teach still another method!