Introduction to
the Classic Course
There
are 7 pieces of fruit in the picture to the right. It is no more likely that you would say that the picture contains 7 “apple
oranges” than you would say that you got 7 AB's if you had a report card that showed you had 5 A's and 2 B's. The important
point is that most of us visualize numbers as adjectives rather than as nouns and, as strange as it may seem at first, the
only time that it is correct to say that 5 + 2 = 7 is when 5, 2 and 7 are adjectives modifying the same noun. For example
we do not say that 5 + 2 = 60 even though it is true that
5 dimes + 2 nickels = 60 cents.
Therefore our arithmetic course is based on this fact:
most people view numbers as adjectives that modify nouns. By having students choose the nouns they want the numbers to modify,
many mathematical topics become much easier to understand. Our experience validates that our approach is both user friendly
and effective.
To
illustrate our point, answer the following questions:
Question #1:
Do you tend to confuse a million
and a billion because they are both very big numbers?
Question
#2:
Do you tend to confuse 12 days with 31 years because they are both long periods of time?
If
you answered “Yes” to Question #1 but “No” to Question #2, cheer up; you don't have a math problem,
you have a language problem.
To
get a glimpse of why the relationship between a million and a billion is the same as the relationship between 12 days and
31 years, a little computation confirms that a million seconds is a little less than 12 days while a billion seconds is a little more than 31 years! While people tend to confuse a
million and a billion, no one ever tends to confuse 12 days with 31 years. Our claim is that most people have trouble with
mathematics because numbers are often presented too abstractly, without reference to the nouns the numbers modify. Now that
you know the story behind how the name of our web site was chosen, your next step is to choose the link below to learn how
to use the course materials to your best advantage.
