Yeah, it's a shame this part of math gets focused on so much. However, that doesn't mean there aren't cool tricks that are handy to know. For instance, to this

Yeah, it's a shame this part of math gets focused on so much. However, that doesn't mean there aren't cool tricks that are handy to know. For instance, to this day I still multiply 2-digit numbers mentally by using difference of squares, just by doing a*b = ((a+b)/2)^2 - ((a-b)/2)^2 (assuming a > b and a+b is even, otherwise cut one of the numbers by 1 and add it back in in the end). This immediately reduces doing two digit multiplication into doing two digit squaring, for which there are some additional techniques (or just brute memorization), so at the minimum you get a 100-fold decrease in required memorization (and likely more). Of course, the above formula is always true, though it gets less usable for higher digits and hopefully most of us can do one digit multiplication in our heads already =)