> When I was in elementary school, my teachers told me it was very important to memorize multiplication tables because I wouldn't always have a calculator in my

> When I was in elementary school, my teachers told me it was very important to memorize multiplication tables because I wouldn't always have a calculator in my pocket. We know how that turned out. This is a bit sad and dangerous. I also resisted learning the multiplication tables because I was too prideful in being able to calculate them on the spot, but at least I memoized the easy ones like 5x 10x, 9x. The objective of multiplication tables is not to be able to do the calculations that you need, but to aid in wider calculations. You learn the table of multiplications not because most calculations are going to be 1 digit by 1 digit, but because most calculations of more digits can be decomposed into single digit calculations. And further most calculations are part of more complex non math Chains of Thought. Your teacher was building up your cache and LUT so that you could solve these in nanoseconds, and move on to higher order processes in your head. You haven't beaten the system by calling a 200ms API, you have cooked your ALU.