re: #443 doppelganglander

Funny, fractions are one thing I’m pretty good at. I can factor the heck out of a fraction and reduce it like crazy.

As we’re talking about math phobia and innumeracy, it occurs to me that the best thing that ever happened to my math skills was playing cards with my dad. He got very impatient when I was slow at counting up my cards, so he taught me to make tens by pairing the cards - 4 +6 =10, 3+7 = 10, etc. My basic arithmetic skills got much better after that because I started looking for shortcuts and found my own way to do things.

I had one good teacher who taught us all sorts of tricks for adding and multiplying quickly; how to easily find 15% tips; how to determine if a number is divisible by 3, etc. Very useful skills that should be taught to every single person.