Dispatches programme about children learning maths

[ItNeverRainsBut]

Anyone watch this Dispatches programme on Channel 4 last night?
The Kids Don't Count

Quite shocking that when they gave the teachers the test aimed at 11-year-olds, they scored and average 45%!

the thing is that the fact that brackets take precedence over anything else is part of the BODMAS rule, the B stands for brackets and these are given the highest precedence. This is like a grammatical rule for a language. For a very complicated expression it would become unwieldy to have to write lots of brackets within brackets, which is why a grammatical type rule exists for expressions.

Where do other operations go? Like an integral say? Basically I did physics years ago, and while i can't remember any of it , what I do remember it boody great long equations about 6 pages long. And without brackets everyone would have been even more than they were already

good point BODMAS doesn't deal with integrals. An integral would need to be within a bracket. BODMAS only deals with brackets, exponents, division, multiplication, addition and subtraction

Integrals use a beginning (integral symbol) and ending (dx) to indicate order - do everything in between first and then integrate at the end.

This is what has thrown me Juule - i did maths physics and further maths at a-level and a physics degree and this is the first i've heard of this bimdas lark...

freaky.

skiffler I suppose i'm thinking of veeeery long expressions with multiple functions of different types IYSWIM.

This thread is starting to make me feel like my brain is malfunctioning!

BODMAS/BIDMAS has always been necessary. There was a question a few years back on the TV show "Are You Smarter Than a 10 Year Old?"
which was "what is the value of 5 + 3 x 0 ?"
The answer given on the show was 0, but the correct answer is 5. There is an interesting discussion about it here
www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=712738

Applying that rule it is 5 yes.

I'm sure we just used brackets though to indicate order of calculation. I'm sure

never mind it's good I have learnt this today otherwise when DD goes to school I would have been floored by her first homework!

I'mSoNot are you sure you never learnt BODMAS? You may have learnt it at some point in school and maybe forgotten about it as you didn't have to use it? Mathematics is an exact science so knowing BODMAS is a must, I'm sure it can't be that you've never heard of it if you did Maths at A and degree level .

Agree with juules too, I'm quite sure my 73 year old dad is familiar with BODMAS.

V familiar with BODMAS here too. I think there are some rules that just have to be learned in maths. It can't all be done with paper cups.

Just talking about this BODMAS/precedence thing, one of the joys of doing A level maths (and A level physics come to that) was finding out the why behind all these rules. Also when you go on to higher levels in maths/science you often find out you've been lied to earlier on to make things simpler.

There seems to be a general fear today about making children actually learn things - you know, actually take what they're told at face value and just learn it. (Is it to do with the demise of authority generally, I wonder?) Not everything can be reasoned out and intuitive, sometimes you just need to knuckle down, learn and remember stuff. It's exactly the same with spellings. We expect far too little of our kids these days IMO.

gaelicsheep, excellent point, I think you have hit the nail on the head with this

"There seems to be a general fear today about making children actually learn things - you know, actually take what they're told at face value and just learn it. (Is it to do with the demise of authority generally, I wonder?) Not everything can be reasoned out and intuitive, sometimes you just need to knuckle down, learn and remember stuff. It's exactly the same with spellings. We expect far too little of our kids these days IMO."

I've never thought about it in this way. I think you are right. In a way it is to do with the demise of authority. It is as you say "expecting far too little of our kids", it is am underestimation of childrens' abilities. It is a touchy-feely excessive attempt to bend over backwards in trying to simplify things so that children will understand. The problem with it is that the attempt to simplify things ends up making them more complicated. Some of this can be seen in the grid method for multiplication etc., which is abandoned at a later stage when traditional methods take over.

It's all v strange. Maybe I have forgotten it as what I learnt later has wiped it out IYSWIM.

I went to private schools - is it a possibility it was taught differently there?

And why is bodmas essential if it is dispensed with for calculations at a higher level?

This happens an awful lot - and I found it really annoying. That when you'd move to the next level they would say - you know what you've had to learn - well that's wrong you need to unlearn it and do it like this, and this is why, and all of a sudden it would all make sense.

I think we underestimate children in that case, by getting them to learn things which aren't quite right by rote, and then expecting them to unearn them. When we could be teaching them the proper way of doing it from the start - which would be a great help for the ones with a natural bent for that subject as it would actually make sense as well.

Just reaised I am basically agreeing with everything else!

PS DH says he knows about bidmas as well I am a bit baffled by all this.

Maybe it has been eradicated by subsequent methods. I can't remember much about primary school at all TBH!

But then it can't have been as when I saw that link that claig did my first thought was "where do the brackets go?". Someone else on the responses to that had the same first thought so it's not just me!

I also don't understand why not all operations are included in the protocol?

US mnemonic for it " "Picking Eminem Made Dre A Star"

v good

ImSoNot: I'm another one from the dinosaur age who went to a Direct Grant school and I learnt BODMAS. Perhaps you were off sick on the day that they did it at your school?

I agree with you that I would much prefer the 4 + 5 x 2 was written as 4 + (5x2), for the avoidance of doubt. But I disagree with the moan about 'unlearning' things as you go up the levels wrt Maths - this is one of the joys of Maths, that it is immutable. If something is true in Maths then it is true forever. Maths never has to go back and correct or refine a theory, like the Sciences do.

this is very interesting. About the origins and so on.

Interesting the example they give:

Using ax^2 + bx + c

without bidmas is

(a(x^2)) + (bx) + c

I would read the first version as it reads with bidmas ie I would not insist on having the brackets as per the second example. So the best I can come up with is that maybe we were taught the rule, but not the acronym IYSWIM, and the rules have been internalised to such a point that I'm not even aware that I'm using them.

On the link that claig provided though it said that young children are taught to do calcuations in order.

So 4 + 5 x 0 = 0

Then later they learn bidmas and 4 + 5 x 0 = 4

That to me is bound to cause confusion. Maths depends on people understanding and following the same conventions, defining them at the start if necessary. If people are taught different conventions then confusion arises IMO. The numbers and how they behave aren't changing, but depending on how you approach them the answer is different. That is what I was talking about with my "unlearning" comment.

I agree that teaching children the 'wrong' thing and then asking them to unlearn it later on has to be a bad thing, and undermines their ability to learn - after all if one thing turns out to be wrong, why not another? Whenever I've taught maths (admittedly at a much higher level) I've often said thing like 'There is a very good reason why this is true, which is beyond the scope of this course. For now, just learn the rule, but remember that there is some underlying justification and later on you will be taught what it is.'

Realised that whilst typing my lengthy reply, the discussion has moved on. ISNT - looks like we have arrived at the same conclusion re algebra versus arithmetic!

Are children really taught to apply calculations in order?
4 + 5 x 0 is never 0 - by definition!
One of the important concepts in maths is that the order you write things down in shouldn't affect the answer, so
4 + 5 x 0 = 5 x 0 + 4
I'm deeply concerned if there are genuinely taught at any point that 0 is a correct answer to this sum...

I foresee some heavy arguments when DD is old enough to go to school...

Yes you see 4 + 2y

where y is 5

is 14.

But you can see in the way we have both written it that the parts that relate to each other are written close together, as if there were brackets there IYSWIM. The 2y part is attached together and therefore a discrete expression IYSWIM.

This is really interesting.

Last night I was thinking about quadratic equations, and that I would write for eg

(x + 2) (x - 3) or whatever. Not x + 2 * x - 3.
Which is just completely wrong for lots of reasons. How do you say (x + 2) (x - 3) with bidmas? And at what stage is the x symbol dropped anyway?

That was what itr said on claig's link skiffler, which is why I was

On the bidmas thing I suspect we were taught the rule but not the acronym. That would make sense.

Do kids still learn times tables?