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Math Hacks Greatest Hits!
People who have been following me for a while know that I published a book on my math hacks for basic arithmetic. Well, I recently published a second book focusing on fractions. In addition to explaining fractions using real-life/intuitive methods, I also included 18 of my math hacks as applied to fractions. To celebrate, I thought I’d do a Medium article showing the 4 math hacks (2 from each book) that my students found most useful.
From the newest book we have:
Adding fractions graphically
let’s add 1/2 + 5/8.
We can split that 5/8 into 4/8 + 1/8. That’s a pile of 4 pieces and a pile with only 1 piece. Now we have 1/2 + 4/8 + 1/8. But 4/8 = 1/2, and 1/2 + 1/2 = 1, so the total is 1 1/8. Graphically, it looks like this:
Adding fractions graphically uses the visual and spatial relations part of our brains rather than the math portions. We use the visual and spatial relations parts of our brains a lot more often than we do the math parts, so they are a lot more…
