You're A Mathematical Genius, You Know!

Written by Murdo Macleod


Continued from page 1

She just can't make sense of them.

"A half times a half is a quarter. So how, when you multiply things together, can you have LESS than you started out with!"

You explain that multiplication and division are two sides ofrepparttar same thing, and you make it "real world" for her with a little analogy:

You get her to imagine a cake.

You remind her that "multiplying by half" is another way of saying divide by 2. So she pictures herself halvingrepparttar 109406 cake, giving one piece half to her friend Jane, and keepingrepparttar 109407 other half.

You daughter now has half a cake.

She multiplies her piece by a half (i.e. "divides it into two again") and she's left with a quarter.

She goes off to bed happy, dreaming about birthday cake And you get to watchrepparttar 109408 ball game on TV.

Again, it's just a matter of simplifying.

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Real world math is not about mental agony, or learning mechanical formulas that you follow mindlessly like a robot.

It's about common sense, seeing how numbers really work, and breaking things down.

You just need a little imagination. After all, that's what genius really is.

------------------------------------------------------------ Murdo Macleod is a reformed calculator user and co-author ofrepparttar 109409 'Fun With Figures' mental math course. Come and see what parents, students, home schoolers, business people, and math phobics aroundrepparttar 109410 world are raving about: http://FunWithFigures.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------



Murdo Macleod is a software developer and co-author of the 'Fun With Figures' mental math course, which shows anyone of any age or ability how to calculate quickly and easily.


Of Art and Cunning. What's the diff?

Written by William Kelly


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People who takerepparttar piss successfully like Voltaire, Ibsen and Shaw are called "great iconoclasts". People who are unsuccessful at it are called Salman Rushdie or more usually “the deceased” Salvador Dali, another applauded fox and roue, takes cunning torepparttar 109405 heights of art itself. A self-styled showman alongrepparttar 109406 lines of Barnum complete with waxed moustache and malacca cane Dali marketed himself onrepparttar 109407 back of his divinised wife Gala withrepparttar 109408 gusto of a Madame Hollywood. In reality, their relationship manifested allrepparttar 109409 warmth of a title fight. Dali kept his output deliberately low so that his produce would stay over-subscribed and therefore over-valued. Had he lived long enough he might well have floated himself onrepparttar 109410 stock market like David Bowie, himself a dabbler in pigment. Journalist and television hostrepparttar 109411 late Malcolm Muggeridge declared that Dali wasrepparttar 109412 worst man he ever interviewed. His egotism was insufferable, he wrote. And this to man who talked fondly of Winston Churchill! By contrast,repparttar 109413 best man he ever interviewed was Brendan Behanrepparttar 109414 boundaries of whose ego stretched no further thanrepparttar 109415 next pint. Brendan just sat there in his studio chair, oblivious to any and every question, singing his head off, and then promptly fell asleep. Dali’s bag was, of course, Freudian psychoanalytic theory which he illustrated using his “paranoiac method”, a red herring if ever there was. Gullible Americans addicted torepparttar 109416 couch boughtrepparttar 109417 lot wholesale and made Dali collectible beyond his wildest hallucinations. You can’t help but admire it, eh? Freud’s nephew, byrepparttar 109418 way died in 1998 atrepparttar 109419 age of 105. He wasrepparttar 109420 founding father ofrepparttar 109421 global-mind control we call ‘modern advertizing’. He used to visit his uncle regularly in pursuit of a good slogan. One wanders if he ever bumped into Salvador Dali onrepparttar 109422 stairs.

Will Kelly is one of The Bogside Artists Ireland's most famous muralists. He has worked as as freelance journalist on-and-off for years and is author of The Bogside Artists' website; http://www.bogsideartists.com


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