4 ms·

Number system of some Asian languages (e.g. Chinese) is base 10, so the children can learn Maths easier.

7rurl 13y ago
What do you mean? The arabic number system that most of the world uses is base 10. Also, I don't see why the base of the number system would make math any easier or harder.
- c-oreills 13y ago
  I assume that base 10 makes it easier since we have 10 digits. But, yes, I too missed the grandparent's point.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- taejo 13y ago
  The arabic numeral system is base-10, but English numerals are only sort of base 10: consider 2, 10, 12 and 22. In English, these are spoken as "two", "ten", "twelve" and "twenty-two". The words "twelve" and "twenty" are both derived from "two", it's true, but in two different ways. "Teen" and "ten" are similar, but there's nothing about "twenty" that indicates a connection to "ten". In Japanese (IIRC), 2, 10, 12, 22 is spoken "ni, ju, ju-ni, ni-ju-ni": "two, ten, two-tens, two-tens-and-two". It's not that one base is better than another: the idea is that a single consistent base is better than inconsistency.
  - scott_s 13y ago
    Thank you. I had flirted with the thoughts before, but never really explicitly considered how odd the English words "eleven", "twelve" and then the "teens" are. Not only is "teen" not quite "ten", we also put it after the ones digit. That is, 19 is "nine-teen", but 91 is "ninety-one".
    - archangel_one 13y ago
      This is true of Germanic languages more generally, where they have special cases for teens too but also read higher numbers as "five-and-twenty" etc. And then French has their vigesimal thing - 92 is quatre-vingt-douze, ie. "four twentys and twelve". English gets off relatively lightly with teens only...
  - schreiaj 13y ago
    Interestingly, this is how I was always taught to think of numbers. Beads on a stick represent all numbers. 1 bead is 1. A ten is therefore a stick with 10 beads on it. A hundred is 10 tens (in a square). A thousand is 10 hundreds stacked on top of each other (or 10 "10 tens" in a cube). This really made it simple to think of things like carrying (oh, that's just breaking the wire holding the beads together) and squaring/rooting (since 100 was a square of 10 it was trivial). It provided an interesting method of multiplication too (simply align two numbers orthogonally and fill in the grid). I still think in terms of this now. Incidentally, when I learned Japanese many years later it felt more natural than saying twenty-two or the abomination that is seventeen.
  - eli_gottlieb 13y ago
    That's the same way we do it in Hebrew, actually. 20 is "esrim", meaning tens, which is actually a special case because Hebrew once had a grammatical dual form. Then comes "shloshim", meaning threes. "Arba'im", fours. And so on. So 22 is "esrim ve'shtayyim", tens and two.
- oftenwrong 13y ago
  I think the parent is referring to how numbers are constructed verbally. A number like 52347 would be said like "five ten thousands, two thousands, three hundreds, four tens, seven ones" Of course, this doesn't really apply above the ten thousands. To say 1,000,000 you have to say "one hundred ten thousands".
  - 2a0c40 13y ago
    This is the case for chinese (japanese, despite being from a completely different language family, inherited the system). Digits are grouped by myriads (10^4) instead of thousands (10^3). Accordingly, you would write 10^6 like this: 100,0000
nnq 13y ago
Any math teacher that uses language association to teach math is doing it completely wrong. If you want to teach math to children younger than 7, stop talking and start drawing! (scribbling arabic numerals is good, but things like the Japanese "multiplication by drawing" are awesome in teaching kids to "feel math") Teachers that teach children do things like "say out loud kids, what is two plus seven?* are basically handicapping ~50% of the children's ability to think mathematically for the rest of their lives. ..."spoken mathematics" is to teaching math like COBOL or Visual Basic are to teaching programming :) As the old saying goes, "shut up and do the math", don't try talking about it.
- sanoli 13y ago
  Do you teach math to children? Can you recommend some good resources for this method? My son is not there yet, but in a couple of years will be, and I'm already interested in the subject, and studying different methods so I'll be able to help him and interact with him in a positive way. P.S. As far as I know, most schools here (Brazil) use a lot of the "Say out loud what is x plus y" way.
  - nnq 13y ago
    No. I'm probably in the same position as you are, thinking and researching about how to teach my children when the time comes. But at one point I'll probably organize all the researched resources and publish them on a blog or website and maybe try to gather an online community around this topic.
- DanBC 13y ago
  Do you have any research to back this up? It feels as if it's correct, but I'd be reassured if there was some good quality research too.
tokenadult 13y ago
There are much more thorough and research-based explanations about why mathematics performance is generally better (recently) among Chinese people than among Americans. https://webstorage.worcester.edu/sites/rbisk/web/marlboro%20%20mt%20910/teaching%20and%20learning%20mathematics%20-%20review%20of%20liping%20ma%20text.pdf https://webstorage.worcester.edu/sites/rbisk/web/marlboro%20... http://www.ams.org/notices/199908/rev-howe.pdf http://www.ams.org/notices/199908/rev-howe.pdf http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-Teaching-Elementary-Mathematics-Understanding/dp/0415873843 http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-Teaching-Elementary-Mathematic... Better teaching makes for better results in learning.

7rurl 13y ago

What do you mean? The arabic number system that most of the world uses is base 10. Also, I don't see why the base of the number system would make math any easier or harder.

c-oreills 13y ago
I assume that base 10 makes it easier since we have 10 digits. But, yes, I too missed the grandparent's point.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
taejo 13y ago
The arabic numeral system is base-10, but English numerals are only sort of base 10: consider 2, 10, 12 and 22. In English, these are spoken as "two", "ten", "twelve" and "twenty-two". The words "twelve" and "twenty" are both derived from "two", it's true, but in two different ways. "Teen" and "ten" are similar, but there's nothing about "twenty" that indicates a connection to "ten". In Japanese (IIRC), 2, 10, 12, 22 is spoken "ni, ju, ju-ni, ni-ju-ni": "two, ten, two-tens, two-tens-and-two". It's not that one base is better than another: the idea is that a single consistent base is better than inconsistency.
- scott_s 13y ago
  Thank you. I had flirted with the thoughts before, but never really explicitly considered how odd the English words "eleven", "twelve" and then the "teens" are. Not only is "teen" not quite "ten", we also put it after the ones digit. That is, 19 is "nine-teen", but 91 is "ninety-one".
  - archangel_one 13y ago
    This is true of Germanic languages more generally, where they have special cases for teens too but also read higher numbers as "five-and-twenty" etc. And then French has their vigesimal thing - 92 is quatre-vingt-douze, ie. "four twentys and twelve". English gets off relatively lightly with teens only...
- schreiaj 13y ago
  Interestingly, this is how I was always taught to think of numbers. Beads on a stick represent all numbers. 1 bead is 1. A ten is therefore a stick with 10 beads on it. A hundred is 10 tens (in a square). A thousand is 10 hundreds stacked on top of each other (or 10 "10 tens" in a cube). This really made it simple to think of things like carrying (oh, that's just breaking the wire holding the beads together) and squaring/rooting (since 100 was a square of 10 it was trivial). It provided an interesting method of multiplication too (simply align two numbers orthogonally and fill in the grid). I still think in terms of this now. Incidentally, when I learned Japanese many years later it felt more natural than saying twenty-two or the abomination that is seventeen.
- eli_gottlieb 13y ago
  That's the same way we do it in Hebrew, actually. 20 is "esrim", meaning tens, which is actually a special case because Hebrew once had a grammatical dual form. Then comes "shloshim", meaning threes. "Arba'im", fours. And so on. So 22 is "esrim ve'shtayyim", tens and two.
oftenwrong 13y ago
I think the parent is referring to how numbers are constructed verbally. A number like 52347 would be said like "five ten thousands, two thousands, three hundreds, four tens, seven ones" Of course, this doesn't really apply above the ten thousands. To say 1,000,000 you have to say "one hundred ten thousands".
- 2a0c40 13y ago
  This is the case for chinese (japanese, despite being from a completely different language family, inherited the system). Digits are grouped by myriads (10^4) instead of thousands (10^3). Accordingly, you would write 10^6 like this: 100,0000

nnq 13y ago

Any math teacher that uses language association to teach math is doing it completely wrong. If you want to teach math to children younger than 7, stop talking and start drawing! (scribbling arabic numerals is good, but things like the Japanese "multiplication by drawing" are awesome in teaching kids to "feel math") Teachers that teach children do things like "say out loud kids, what is two plus seven?* are basically handicapping ~50% of the children's ability to think mathematically for the rest of their lives. ..."spoken mathematics" is to teaching math like COBOL or Visual Basic are to teaching programming :) As the old saying goes, "shut up and do the math", don't try talking about it.

sanoli 13y ago
Do you teach math to children? Can you recommend some good resources for this method? My son is not there yet, but in a couple of years will be, and I'm already interested in the subject, and studying different methods so I'll be able to help him and interact with him in a positive way. P.S. As far as I know, most schools here (Brazil) use a lot of the "Say out loud what is x plus y" way.
- nnq 13y ago
  No. I'm probably in the same position as you are, thinking and researching about how to teach my children when the time comes. But at one point I'll probably organize all the researched resources and publish them on a blog or website and maybe try to gather an online community around this topic.
DanBC 13y ago
Do you have any research to back this up? It feels as if it's correct, but I'd be reassured if there was some good quality research too.

tokenadult 13y ago

There are much more thorough and research-based explanations about why mathematics performance is generally better (recently) among Chinese people than among Americans. https://webstorage.worcester.edu/sites/rbisk/web/marlboro%20%20mt%20910/teaching%20and%20learning%20mathematics%20-%20review%20of%20liping%20ma%20text.pdf https://webstorage.worcester.edu/sites/rbisk/web/marlboro%20... http://www.ams.org/notices/199908/rev-howe.pdf http://www.ams.org/notices/199908/rev-howe.pdf http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-Teaching-Elementary-Mathematics-Understanding/dp/0415873843 http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-Teaching-Elementary-Mathematic... Better teaching makes for better results in learning.