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So the first questions are about committing to memory the multiplication tables up to 10, the squares up to 31 and cubes up to 11. How many people can actually

So the first questions are about committing to memory the multiplication tables up to 10, the squares up to 31 and cubes up to 11. How many people can actually do that?

bigbillheck 5y ago
I would expect that quite a few determined children could do so. The immediate next question is "first ten powers of 2" and not to gatekeep but surely vast swathes of the commentariat here knew most of those pretty young.
- a_ghoul 5y ago
  I would argue that those powers of 2 are easier to commit to memory than squares up to 31 (from my experience only knowing the former).
  - gugagore 5y ago
    Powers of 2 certainly come up more often, e.g. memory sizes before everything had GBs of RAM.
  - throwaway316943 5y ago
    I don’t see why they should be any harder than any other type of memorization. Note that they are partially covered by knowing the times table up to 10.
  - bigbillheck 5y ago
    Why is '128' easier to remember than '121', '512' easier than '519', and '256' easier than, uh, '256'?
elijaht 5y ago
Quickly running through it I know from memory all but a couple of cubes, all but maybe ten squares, all of the multiplication tables. It would take maybe 30 minutes to get everything down I'm pretty handy with numbers but nothing special. It doesn't seem like that major a task
psyklic 5y ago
We had to memorize the squares up to 21 in grade school. The book is absolutely right though -- memorizing squares/cubes/2^n is a math superpower. It's extremely useful when solving textbook problems or when just exploring math on your own. I've seen the powers of 3 so often they've immediately become recognizable, 27,81,243, just as I'm sure most people immediately recognize 81 as a square when they see it -- it just "pops out" from the page. This holds for simple identities too. Having things like x^2 - y^2 = (x+y)(x-y) immediately come to mind when you see just one half of the identity is ridiculously useful.

So the first questions are about committing to memory the multiplication tables up to 10, the squares up to 31 and cubes up to 11. How many people can actually do that?

bigbillheck 5y ago

I would expect that quite a few determined children could do so. The immediate next question is "first ten powers of 2" and not to gatekeep but surely vast swathes of the commentariat here knew most of those pretty young.

a_ghoul 5y ago
I would argue that those powers of 2 are easier to commit to memory than squares up to 31 (from my experience only knowing the former).
- gugagore 5y ago
  Powers of 2 certainly come up more often, e.g. memory sizes before everything had GBs of RAM.
- throwaway316943 5y ago
  I don’t see why they should be any harder than any other type of memorization. Note that they are partially covered by knowing the times table up to 10.
- bigbillheck 5y ago
  Why is '128' easier to remember than '121', '512' easier than '519', and '256' easier than, uh, '256'?

elijaht 5y ago

Quickly running through it I know from memory all but a couple of cubes, all but maybe ten squares, all of the multiplication tables. It would take maybe 30 minutes to get everything down I'm pretty handy with numbers but nothing special. It doesn't seem like that major a task

psyklic 5y ago

We had to memorize the squares up to 21 in grade school. The book is absolutely right though -- memorizing squares/cubes/2^n is a math superpower. It's extremely useful when solving textbook problems or when just exploring math on your own. I've seen the powers of 3 so often they've immediately become recognizable, 27,81,243, just as I'm sure most people immediately recognize 81 as a square when they see it -- it just "pops out" from the page. This holds for simple identities too. Having things like x^2 - y^2 = (x+y)(x-y) immediately come to mind when you see just one half of the identity is ridiculously useful.