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Tez

BIDMAS - A Mathematical Question

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Canopus,I am living proof :lol::lol::lol:

I managed a 'b' GCE without understanding differentiation and integration AT ALL, nevermind BIDMAS :lol:

Went on to do a job that was totally maths based, and loved it. Never made any huge mathematical errors, the inland revenue would have been on us like a ton of bricks :tearful:

 

wac

Edited by waccoe

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I am not naturally mathematical and went on to do language related stuff, but I did get an "A" at O level due to outstanding teachers all the way through secondary school. I'm prouder of that "A" than a lot of other things I've achieved, as it was hard won.

 

Don't ask me anything about differentiation or calculus now though. I can't even understand my 8 year old's maths. :hypno::wacko::)

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It's weird, I went to a really progressive junior school where we learned sets and bases (unheard of in those days) and then I went to grammar school where the text books were so old (ok not, that old !)that we had to convert the sums from l.s.d. into decimal money :lol:

The text books were so old at this school that way down on the list of previous owners of my friend's 'a' level french textbook was the name 'Edward (Ted)Hughes', I bet she never gave that back !

 

wac

Edited by waccoe

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:lol::lol::lol: ,

came across other half's log books recently, he laughes his head off at the thought of having to look things up. Me, I don't think I'd have got through GCE without using something that was set down in a table for me. The inland revenue still use tables for PAYE and NI calculations, I find them reassuring, bless....

 

wac

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Ah what a wonderful trip down memory lane this is... :rolleyes:

 

I also remember having to learn all our maths formulae off by heart - even when I went on to do what would be the equivalent of an AS level. I wrote them all out in wax crayon and blu tacked them all over my cupboard doors in the run up to exams. :hypno::hypno::hypno:

 

Tell that to the kids today and they wouldn't believe ya... :lol:

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not when they step in that exam room with a calculator that can do a 1000 times what my small brain can, and already knowing what the questions will be, and already knowing they've done brilliantly in the course work.........

In my day... ( to be said in a Monty Python voice) we went to exams after a full day's hauling coal up from t'pit, wi nowt to write upon, part from a bit 'o coal nicked from t'slag heap.

T'war an 'ard life...

wac

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Hi ;)

 

As far as I remember during my froggie school time (French teaching) presenting a calculation like this was unacceptable we were taught to use bracket every time

in this case 3 + (2 X 4) it is only after pasing our O levels that we would learn BIDMAS.

But from early age we would be ask to use the brackets in different ways and give all the different possible answers to a calculation. B)

All the French maths teaching was base on various essaye from Descartes who's MOTO was "order and methodology", base on "logic and reasoning".

I don't know now but I think things may have not change much, one thing I know is that most people on the continent are good at mental maths even if they have not study after 16.

I personnaly find the math teaching here inconsistant and very illogical because I thinks schools want to introduce concept like BIDMAS far too early before pupils get the chance to learn the basic... and practice it. :wacko:

 

The way I see my son learning how to make a multiplication annoyes me as I am not too sure if he will get there eventualy, as most teacher do not seem to know where to start. :oops:

 

Sorry for the old fashion froggie concept........

 

Malika.

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Anyone remember log books? :hypno: When I did my o levels (in '78 in Zimbabwe) calculators were not allowed.

I did mine in 1980 and it said something on the exam paper about the fact that we could have a book of logarithms on request. I've probably still got my book of log tables in the loft somewhere, probably next to the 'Ready Reckoner' and underneath the slide rule....

 

I remember my Dad's first ever pocket calculator arriving in the post (must have been in the mid-70's), it cost a small fortune and had an almost unusable keyboard, but he was the envy of all his friends and colleagues for having such an amazing and capable device and we were all very impressed.

 

Better stop now before I start wittering on about Commodore Pets and Sinclair ZX-80's.

 

Simon

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I think I am the only grey person in the village - and I did it left to right!

 

The answer would be 20 unless you had brackets that you could see which directed you to do that bit of the sum inside the brackets.

 

I couldn't get to grips with the way that they do addition these days - we did columns and carried figures into the next column and in subtraction we borrowed from the next column. I can't do it the new fangled way.

 

I had to learn Pythagoras (sp) Theorem and I could never get to grips with it. I was arguing with my husband who is engineer (he believes that they should rule the earth as they are far superior) about useless things I learned including the above Theorem and questioning what use it was to a little old grey haired woman like me. He said it was a really useful thing to know - why?

 

If I wanted to, I could use the Theorem to calculate the height of a tree.

 

Pleeeeese - when would I ever be inclined to calcualte the height of a tree!

 

HelenL

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I remember my Dad's first ever pocket calculator arriving in the post (must have been in the mid-70's), it cost a small fortune and had an almost unusable keyboard, but he was the envy of all his friends and colleagues for having such an amazing and capable device and we were all very impressed.

:lol: My mum was an accountant and if she had work to do at home occasionally she used to haul out this great big adding machine. When she'd finished she'd let me have a go as a treat. I used to love the sound it made and I was so in awe of what it could do - it seemed like magic. :)

 

Wac - I can't do subtraction the way my son has learned it. They do " borrowing" differently and I can't get my head round it.

 

K

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I bet no one can rmember comptometers and the operators. There used to be two in the office that my mum ran - theworked so fast on these comptometers. I loved the noise that they made and I loved pressing the number keys down - but I do not have a clue what they did.

 

I started life using a large mechanical accounting machine and you put ledger cards in and then this great contraption like something out of Wallace and Grommit used to chug and whirr. I then used a computer that had tickertape that you fed in on a sprocket to load the programme.

 

It was all mechanical and moving parts and ink heads. Anyone remember an IBM Golfball typewriter - lovely jubbly!

 

HelenL

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Helen153--

we've just used Pythagoras's theorem to square up the base of the kids' new play house (it's 8 ft by 6ft, so the diagonal should be....).

How sad is that?

L

 

ps yup, I'm struggling with my 9-yr-old's maths too

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Helen I remember comptometers. Infact, there was a woman still using one in the Accounts office of a firm I worked for in the 1980s. Could never understand why anyone would use one, seemed easier and quicker to do it unaided.

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And still no-one has mentioned slide rules!

 

When I was at school, the object of desire for maths geeks was - the circular slide rule! B)

 

I use my maths results as a guide to when my AS kicked in and my life fell apart - A in O-level (2 years early), O in A-level (4 years later)

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I use my maths results as a guide to when my AS kicked in and my life fell apart - A in O-level (2 years early), O in A-level (4 years later)

Me too!

 

A in maths a year early then just scraped an E at the 'A' level.

 

Those years from 15-18 are hard for any child, but even more so when you're 'different' from other children. It's only in the last few years (since having children on the spectrum) that I have been able to make any sense at all of that period of my life, which was not a happy one for me.

 

 

Simon

 

Although to be fair, I did mention slide rules a little further up the thread :unsure:

Edited by mossgrove

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He did mention slide rules - I heard him!

 

Thanks for the comptometer link Simon. There is a manufacturer on there called Burroughs and I worked a Burroughs L5000 Accounting machine. Told you I was the only grey in the village!

 

All I can remember now abut Pythagoras Theroem is something about the square on the hypotenuse is equal to something or other - so I must have had the most un-square wendy houses in the world. - shame on me.

 

Tez, did the lady operator of the comptometer work it very fast - I was fascinated at the speed these two girls worked - and they used to chat to each other whilst they were calculating - they were a bit like the Sparrow sisters in the Odd Couple!

 

Love

 

HelenL

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I remember visiting some friends of my fathers when I was about 8 years old and they had a hand calculator that looked a bit like an overgrown typewriter and printed put the results on a piece of paper. I though it was the coolest gadget ever and really wanted one. I am sure it must have cost a fortune though.

 

Simon

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A question I have never been able to find the answer to is when did schools go metric.

 

My parents attended school during the 1950s and 60s and everything was imperial. A friend was at school during the 60s and 70s. Most stuff at primary was imperial but the O Level maths and physics courses were metric and so were the exam papers. My primary schools during the 80s were all metric, but oddly there were questions in the maths GCSE papers that involved imperial.

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Canopus,

 

I took my maths O Level in 1974 and we were expected to know, understand and use both imperial and metric and to convert between them to arrive at a standard measure to solve a problem when the measurements provided were mixed. The predominant measure, apart from money, was still imperial.

 

Can't remember about Physics.

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I have discussed the left to right calculation vs BIDMAS with a friend who attended school during the 1960s and 70s and has a degree in maths. He has always been taught BIDMAS at school and has never seen the left to right calculation in any textbook. He suspects that left to right calculation may well have been the method used with Roman numerals and that BIDMAS was invented outside Europe in countries that used a decimal number system.

 

The same friend is a member of the BWMA and can't uncover any precise information about when schools went metric. He reckons that there was no official policy dictating that schools teach metric after a certain date, so metrication was phased in gradually from the late 1960s following government recommendations. There is no requirement to teach imperial units in KS1-3 but that doesn't explain why a high proportion of teachers are so anti imperial.

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Today I got out "A Complete O Level Mathematics" by A Greer that was published in 1976. It was the book I used to learn algebra, calculus, and trigonometry whilst at primary school. All units are metric so imperial must have been abolished on the O Level by 1976. On the first page of Chapter 1 the sequence of operations is described but the word BIDMAS isn't mentioned. It states:

 

5 x 8 + 7 = 40 + 7 = 47 (not 5 x 15)

 

8 / 4 + 9 = 2 + 9 = 11 (not 8 / 13)

 

5 x 4 - 12 / 3 + 7 = 20 - 4 + 7 = 23

 

Which is BIDMAS and not working from left to right.

 

There is no mention of calculators and book describes in great detail how to use tables of logs, square roots, and trig functions, so BIDMAS definitely predates calculators.

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