Professor: Fractions should be scrapped


	Professor: Fractions should be scrapped

cpltaiji

1-23-2008 11:01 PM

586 views

tags:

research, general interest, education

1 Comment |

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5-28-2008 1:30 PM

masbury

I have the hardest time figuring out exactly how big 57/64ths is, in my workshop. Say I want to use the drill bit that's the next size larger...what a waste of time!

I can do it at a glance with decimals.

I understand there are only three nations that still officially use feet and inches - Liberia, USA, and, Myanmar.

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<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/14e65d11-1901-4413-979a-a8a213138c53/2BD2539C-E919-49C9-B315-DF133A467A06/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-01-23-fractions_N.htm?csp=34" href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-01-23-fractions_N.htm?csp=34" style="font-size: 11px;">www.usatoday.com</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-01-23-fractions_N.htm?csp=34">PHILADELPHIA — A few years ago, Dennis DeTurck, an award-winning professor of mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania, stood at an outdoor podium on campus and proclaimed, "Down with fractions!"</blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-01-23-fractions_N.htm?csp=34">"Fractions have had their day, being useful for by-hand calculation," DeTurck said as part of a 60-second lecture series. "But in this digital age, they're as obsolete as Roman numerals are."</blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-01-23-fractions_N.htm?csp=34">The speech started a firestorm, particularly after the university posted it online.</blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-01-23-fractions_N.htm?csp=34">"There were blogs and rants, and there were some critical e-mails," said DeTurck, who is now dean of the college of arts and sciences at Penn. "They'd always boil down to: 'What would we do in cooking and carpentry?' "</blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-01-23-fractions_N.htm?csp=34">DeTurck is stirring the pot again, this time in a book scheduled to be published this year. Not only does he favor the teaching of decimals over fractions to elementary school students, he's also taking on long division, the calculation of square roots and by-hand multiplication of long numbers.</blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/2BD2539C-E919-49C9-B315-DF133A467A06/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content8.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>

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