Honesty Moment: multiplication
I didn’t understand multiplication until college.
I could perform multiplication just fine. Like all little good boys and girls, I had my multiplication table memorized up to the 9s, but until I was well past puberty, I didn’t fully grasp the concept behind it.
And for me, it was all a matter of grammar.
I was walking across campus one day, and a voice in my head came out of nowhere to say, “3 times 4, 3 times 4… Three, four times.”
The simplicity of it stopped my in my tracks. “Oh!” I said. “Three, four times! Well, duh! Why didn’t they just say that?”
I quickly visualized a table with 3 columns, and 4 rows, and just as quickly, division was also finally in my realm of complete understanding.
Of course, I’ll still laugh out loud at the sight of a quadratic equation, but at least I finally understand the useful things.
This Honesty Moment brought to you by Members of the Semantically Limited
9 December 2002, 23:10
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