Can you do long division?

[Noperope]

Attempting to help dd with her 11plus homework and feeling more and more stupid by the minute. Could you work out 324 divided by 4 with only pen and paper? No cheating and you must show your work, not just write the answer!

Haha no. And I got straight As at GCSE and am a teacher now (not primary)

Same as @Likewhatever
I remember trying to teach that to the dcs in primary.
Both at Uni now. Neither can do long division. Both in a science subject where they use maths everyday…..

I get 46.28..would be 46 to no decimal places 46.3 to one decimal place. Am I wrong?

You are right.

A number above a line and a number under a line has always represented division. Think about when you did algebra or used formulae eg

a + b
3c

Or fractions eg 1/2 (a half) means 1 divided by 2

Apparently because the method looks like a bus stop although it's a bit of a stretch if you ask me!

Seven into 3 won't go, link up
Seven into 32 goes four, remainder 4
Seven into 44 goes six, remainder 2

Seven into 325 goes 46 r2,

I could probably work out the r2 as a decimal or fraction, but the best bit about not being at school anymore is that I don't have to.

I think long division is when it's a number bigger than 12 at the beginning, like 8940 divided by 51.

Yes, and I visualised doing it in my head lol

Yes but that's not a long division sun. That's standard division.

And I could do that in my head.

Don't beat yourself up though - if you aren't mathematically minded that's ok, not everyone is!

If God had intended us to do long division he wouldn't have invented calculators

I'm glad I never knew it as bus stop, I think that would have confused me. (Buses, other than the school bus, did not feature in my rural upbringing.)

I was never taught chunking, but when I discovered what it was, I realised that is how I usually do mental arithmetic. I guess I needed to know and understand techniques and how numbers relate to each other before I would have worked it out, though.

Men, not God.
edtechmagazine.com/k12/article/2012/11/calculating-firsts-visual-history-calculators

Yes.

But buggered if I can work out what 56 is as a percentage of 469, for example.

Be aware, the way we were taught (me, mid primary, aged 8, 1969!) will bear no relationship to the way they're taught today.

@cakeorwine

The crazy thing about long division is that (if you can't so say your 17 times table in your head), you need to do separate workings to see how many 17s you need to get to say 89 in 8979 / 17

I am intrigued what method of dividing by 17 there is where you don't need to know how many 17s you need to get into a certain number.

That's what I mean.

When I've discussed this before, people have said chunking is messy and over complicated.

But you still need to write down the 17 times table next to your long division calculation to help you work out how to do the long division - presumably using addition methods if you aren't sure how to do the addition mentallly.

Chunking works really well - it makes sense and you can see how you get the groups to get to the answer

I was about to ask! I divided 7 into 32, carried the 4 and then divided that by 7
I am also old, but it is easy

You don't need to write the whole 17 times table out. 2 x 17 is 34 so 4 x 17 would be 68 and 8 x 17 would be 136 and we know the easy one of 10 x 17 is 170 so you could work out answers from this.

I would hope anybody could do it.

No, never really could and it hasn't hindered me.

I honestly have no idea why dividing by anything larger than 12 is in the primary curriculum. There’s always one or two division questions (5-10% of the marks) on the arithmetic paper, dividing by things like 47 or 93. As above, they have to spend time working out the appropriate times table, then doing the actual calculation. Calculators exist, this is a pointless skill (unlike the original question in this post, where lots of people they can basically do it mentally by visualising the short division method they were taught at school - so quicker/easier than a calculator). Removing calculators from the primary curriculum in 2014 was a poor choice, and I hope it’s reversed when the curriculum is rewritten by this government.

No. I struggle with maths. I can do money, and have worked in lots of places where I could balance tills and wages etc and never make a mistake, but maths like division and times tables etc makes my brain fall to pieces and have a little weep.

I can do it, but my adult children could not because they were not taught long division because “it’s completely unnecessary” according to their teachers at the time. I disagree because there are methods of factorising polynomials in maths that rely on dividing one polynomial by another, using long division. If you can’t do it with numbers you will struggle to do it with symbols. I did not win this argument. Many elements of arithmetic prepare students for maths, but this is ignored because “calculators can do it”. Admittedly there are now tools that can do symbolic maths as well, but it’s generally better to know what they are doing before using them.

If you've never been taught how to do it (I wasn't at school) then how would you know how to do it?

I don't think calculators should be used in primary school. Every one needs to learn basic maths. It amazes me how many people don't know simple percentages and in shops if there's a sale on with 10, 15 or 20% etc off, there will be a notice saying how much the sale price is.

Another thing is at the till when the total is something like £6.23 and I hand over a £10 note plus the extra 23p and the person looks at me completely baffled.

no way, I am terrible at Maths, got no qualifications in it at all, I just cannot do it

I have tried twice to do Functional Maths Skills but just cannot get it at all

I do not know my times tables and have never been able to learn them

I seem to see numbers and my brain kinds freezes and I cannot work it out, its sets me off in tears, I can add up a bit with pen and paper and do subtraction but cannot do any multiplying or dividing, I cannot work anything out in my head at all, such as if I was asked 8 plus 7, I would need to count on my fingers for the answer, my DH would know this off by heart in his head🙄

I can sort my money out using a calculator and Excel otherwise I would be buggered😁