like any science, math is more about problem solving skills versus the rote action, and mental math nowadays is nothing more than a 'fun' game. However some ins

like any science, math is more about problem solving skills versus the rote action, and mental math nowadays is nothing more than a 'fun' game. However some insight can be gained from mental math tricks that help solve deeper problems (log addition versus product computation for bayesian nets to avoid overflow), but the cost of teaching these tricks conveys to students that the trick is the goal, missing the point of mathematics as a science. At worse teaching such tricks results in us losing otherwise amazingly talented future mathematicians because they weren't particularly good at the 'tricks' part.