Hi im new :-) and fairly new to gardening :-S
 

Sacha wrote:[i]
On 2011-01-30 15:54:34 +0000, Rusty Hinge
said:

kay wrote:
Bill Grey;911046 Wrote:
"kay" wrote in message
...


I'd happily settle for less ability to multiply numbers together in
ones
head in exchange for greater understanding of what the numbers
actually
say, and therefore a greater ability to separate scientific argument
from opinion and quackery.


But one has to start somewhere!


But I think learning times tables by rote up to 12 x 12 is the wrong
place to start!

And as someone who did so, I think it's the right place to start.

Hear, hear. But Kay's younger than me so we probably look at things
rather differently.

She must be older than I then, TAAAW.

*I* unforget some of the songs we sang at school - the ones telling that
naughty Mr. Hitler what to do.

And it's next best to certain that I saw operational, one of the present
Battle of Britain Flight's Spitfires - it spent all its (wartime) flying
life at RAF Hornchurch, and I lived in that vicinity a year before it
flew off the line.

--
Rusty

Hi im new :-) and fairly new to gardening :-S
 

"Rusty Hinge" wrote in message
...[i]
Sacha wrote:
On 2011-01-30 15:54:34 +0000, Rusty Hinge
said:

kay wrote:
Bill Grey;911046 Wrote:
"kay" wrote in message
...


I'd happily settle for less ability to multiply numbers together in
ones
head in exchange for greater understanding of what the numbers
actually
say, and therefore a greater ability to separate scientific argument
from opinion and quackery.


But one has to start somewhere!


But I think learning times tables by rote up to 12 x 12 is the wrong
place to start!

And as someone who did so, I think it's the right place to start.

Hear, hear. But Kay's younger than me so we probably look at things
rather differently.

She must be older than I then, TAAAW.

*I* unforget some of the songs we sang at school - the ones telling that
naughty Mr. Hitler what to do.

And it's next best to certain that I saw operational, one of the present
Battle of Britain Flight's Spitfires - it spent all its (wartime) flying
life at RAF Hornchurch, and I lived in that vicinity a year before it flew
off the line.

--
Rusty

Rusty, did you know that there are 18 operational Spitfires flying in the
World?

We had a good few at Sandown Airport a couple of years back, I think about 7
or 8. Very spectacular when they all took off at once an a couple of
occasions.during the day. We had one do a display a few days ago. We usually
have a display from the BBMF at our day at RAF Cosford.

Mike


--

....................................
Don't take life too seriously, you'll never get out alive
....................................

A good many more would have passed had they had the opportunity.

It's a difficult question. Do you have an exam which covers a wide range of ability, with all the problems of adequate discrimination throughout the ability scale? Or separate exams - with the problem that even a good pass in the "lower ability" exam is disregarded by employers, even though it may be an indicator of greater ability tan a low pass in the "higher ability" exam.

I'm not sure we're all arguing about the same question. I have no doubt that if you want to instantly be able to multiply two numbers from 1 to 12, rote learning of tables will do the trick.

But I think the time could be better spent. For example, just recently I've seen two newspapers make the same mistake - in the one case, a couple had just had their third child, and all three children had been born on the same date, the chances of which, according to the newspaper, were "an astonishing 48 million to 1".

It would be astonishing if it were true, but the right answer is about 133 thousand to 1.

A trivial mistake - but what when the person making this mistake is a juror in a trial and presented with an equally spurious "probability" of the person in the dock being guilty of the death of their second child cot death, or where evidence is based largely on a probability of DNA matching? It's a bit more important then that people should be confident in handling probabilities. But so few are!

Hi im new :-) and fairly new to gardening :-S
 

In article ,
Martin wrote:
On Sun, 30 Jan 2011 22:13:19 +0000, kay wrote:

But I think the time could be better spent.

Teaching statistics to 6-8 year olds?

Or probability, at least. There isn't a problem doing that, and
most will learn it readily.

For example, just recently
I've seen two newspapers make the same mistake - in the one case, a
couple had just had their third child, and all three children had been
born on the same date, the chances of which, according to the newspaper,
were "an astonishing 48 million to 1".

It would be astonishing if it were true, but the right answer is about
133 thousand to 1.

It wasn't the newspaper that was wrong. The Daily Mail quoted a professor of
Pure Mathematics

And what evidence do you have that the Daily Wail quoted him
correctly? My money is on a misquotation.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

Sounds like you've done a lot. Welcome to the forum! I haven't been on here for very long and haven't been into gardening for all that long too. Good luck with your endeavours :)

What for you is the purpose of learning times tables by rote? I thought it was to enable one to multiply relatively small numbers together in your head, but I may be missing something.

Or maybe they asked him the wrong question?

What is the probability of the three children being born on May 5th (or whatever the date is)?

rather than

What is the probability of the three children being born on the same day?

Hi im new :-) and fairly new to gardening :-S
 

Sacha wrote:

My husband lived in Essex during the war and he has memories much like
yours. He recalls the vapour trails and rat-a-tat-a-tat. He was born
in 1933 and his (much) older brothers, being in reserved occupations,
were in the fire brigade and went up to London on many, many nights to
fight fires caused by the Blitz. He has several memories of planes over
his rural bit of Essex. You two should meet one day -I'll supply the
amber liquid!

When I was at bawdy school and walking n the Downs (in a crocoodile!)
with the rest of the kids, I unforget seeing a lumpy line of black puffs
of smoke marching across the sky, and a big red flash.

This was followed by the Boom-boom-boom-boo-boo-boom as the Bofors
opened-up in Newhaven-ish, then the
crud-crud-crud-crud-crud-crud-*THUD!* of things going off over the
Channel. I claimed the hit (doodle-bug) for my stepfather-to-be, who was
OIC a battery in Newhaven-ish.

What seemed like five minutes late the sound of the explosion ame
grumpity-bumpity-grOWl-thud-thud-thud, reflected off the French coast.

An early lesson in the speed of sound.

--
Rusty