Why 4th grade math is important.
Or, my trip to the grocery store.
A few days ago I went to the grocery store to stock up on tasty bits for lunches and dinners (I need to figure out what to have for breakfast. I’m stumped lately. I don’t like how cereal makes me feel about 2 hours later, and I’ve done the cantaloupe/cottage cheese/almonds thing enough now.). I collected my gallons of milk, slabs of meat, liters of diet cola, cartons of yogurt and rice noodles and headed over to the deli, which is conveniently located next to the produce, so I can place my deli order and collect my fruits and vegetables.
My latest standard order is 2/3 lb peppered turkey, 1/3 lb provalone and 1/3 lb pepperjack. I have been able to relay this information to the kind deli employee, dash through the produce to collect apples, limes, avocados, salad mix, onion, garlic, perhaps a pineapple or some peas or something and return to the deli just as the last of my fine assortment of meat and cheeses was being zipped up.
On this particularly fine day, I started to rattle off my order and the (at this point, it became obvious he was new, and my suspicions were only confirmed as the day proceeded) deli-man recoiled with such information. “I’m never going to remember that,” he declared. Ok. “Two-thirds of your peppered turkey, please,” I repeated.
What he said next caused me extreme pause. I had to stop, blink and replay this particular moment in my head a few times to make sure I heard what I thought I heard. “So, like, just under .25?” Uhm. No. “Uh, no, closer to 0.7, actually.” “Oh, ok.” He proceeded to slice meat and came back with 0.26 lbs of meat on his happy dandy scale. “Is that ok?” “Uh, well, about 3x that, actually. About 0.7.” It took 15 minutes to get my 0.7 lbs of meat.
Then we had to move to the cheese. “How much cheese did you want again?” “Uh, just make that 1/4 of a pound of provalone.” [pause] “About 0.25.” “Ok.” [long pause in which he finds coworker to ask a question] “Which one’s provalone?”
Despite his not knowing anything about fractions or deli cheese, I cut the guy a little bit of slack, as he was new (I’d never seen him there before) and pretty nervous and worked up. Hopefully he’s gained some confidence and had a little free time with a calculator to work out some of those fractions.
Just to clarify:
1/4 = 0.25
1/3 = 0.33
1/2 = 0.5
2/3 = 0.66
3/4 = 0.75
And yes, 2/3 lb meat and 1/3 lb of each cheese is important. It works out remarkably well for us. 1/2 lb of meat isn’t enough to last until the next trip and 1 lb is too much to last long enough for it to get eaten and not forgotten. And there has to be 1/2 as much of each cheese as meat, and I don’t even want to contemplate the discussion that would arise from asking for 3/8 lb of cheese. It’s a system, dammit, and it works.
October 6th, 2003 at 7:57 am
That’s really scary, and in fact, I’m surprised it hasn’t happened more often. I’ve never had that experience myself.
October 6th, 2003 at 9:05 am
No. What IS scary is not a single fucking person at McDonald’s knows how to make change. They NEED the register to tell them what the change is.
I like testing them. I carry a pocket of change with me…Give them a five so they ring it in as a five, and then say oh wait. I have the change.
The look of abject horror on their faces makes the food taste that much better.
October 7th, 2003 at 8:37 am
Also this: If I would get back 22 cents in change, I give them three pennies so that I can have a quarter instead of two dimes and two pennies. Most people look at me as though I’m loose from the asylum at that point.
October 7th, 2003 at 8:54 am
oh yeah, I’ll do that as well…but I think it’s more fun when they can’t figure out something as simple as EXACT change.
October 7th, 2003 at 11:25 am
Fortunatly, I have not had that deli experience either. That is horrible! Coming from me, that’s really saying something. Exact change, on the other hand…well, before my work experience (think: “I have an extensive collection of name tags and hair nets”) I would have said that I would have had trouble but I can now say with confidence that it really is easy when that’s all you’re doing all day long to make correct change and figure that shit out in your head. I’m not as cruel as Tim, but there is definitly a problem with basic math skills in this little society of ours. The thought of Tim doing that has my sides hurting.
October 8th, 2003 at 7:35 am
I hate it when you ask for 1/3 lb of lunchmeat, and they slice it and bag it, and suddenly you notice that the scale said something like .479 lbs. NO, that’s not 1/3 lb. That’s nearly 1/2 lb. And if I had wanted a half pound, I would have asked for it. Seems they only care if they’re slighly under, not if you’re going to get stuck paying for extra meat that you didn’t want in the first place. Grr.
October 8th, 2003 at 10:22 am
One, the folks you’re dealing with barely got out of high school. Two, fractions and decimals shouldn’t be 4th grade math, and if they are then that’s why people typically don’t learn them.
In our educational system the rush to teach things doesn’t always mesh with what the ‘average’ person is capable of learning. Since we graduate high school students who know nothing, our solution is to try to teach it to them sooner. Duh.
Now that they’re behind the counter, they could probably learn the concepts that they’re lacking, but no one has the patience or ability (in a grocery store) to teach them. It’s really a sad state of affairs.
October 8th, 2003 at 11:32 am
BZZT! wrong! If these concepts are too complex, why are Japanese learning Calculus in 8th/9th grade?! Fractions are NOT complex things. They are no more complex than whole numbers. The idea of a fraction is something that can be presented in the form of an Apple, Orange or Heart-Fucking-Container. Kids -should- get this.
Why are American schools the laughing stock of the world? You. You make excuses for them, allow the students off the hook of personal responsibility. Parents that don’t give a damn about their kids, underpaid teachers that don’t give a damn about their students and the students themselves don’t care about their future or their ignorance to apply themselves and learn. The teachers are tired of fighting these kids, and if the parents aren’t there to back up the teachers, the teachers aren’t paid enough to put up with the shit. It comes down to the kids.
These are the same kids that cannot identify the United Fucking States of America on a map. I could probably point to any country you tell me to on a map. (Provided it hasn’t been made a country in the last 10 years – i.e. the Soviet states or those eastern Euopean nations that change their name weekly) Give me a new map for 5 minutes and I could probably do that too. 20 minutes for their capitals.
The point is the “not good at math” excuse is not valid at this point of a person’s life. We are talking about an (probably) 18 year old that still hasn’t figured out fractions. maybe if we were talking about not knowing the decimal equivalent of 1/16 or 5/18, I could understand that…but 1/2? 1/3?
This is a lack of booksmarts and common sense and this kid should be ejected from the primordial ooze we call society before he passes these gene traits on.
If there is one thing I hate (luckily there are many things I hate) and that is excusing ignorance. Face it, if the kid wanted to learn it, he would. The problem comes in when we LET HIM not learn it. He unfortunately passed 4th grade. A teacher let him slip by. The parent didn’t care, and the student less.
It inconveniences me, you, everyone because this twit was allowed to go into 5th grade.
October 8th, 2003 at 4:46 pm
I don’t disagree that we shouldn’t pass kids along when they don’t know the material, but teaching material that they are psychologically unable to handle only causes frustration and failure.
The concepts become difficult if they are presented too early and without the proper background.
You’re arguing with a former teacher who is just as discouraged and fed up with the system as you are, but I’ve had the training.
October 8th, 2003 at 9:33 pm
So, all those Japanese kids that learn it are better than US kids? I can’t accept that.
So what are they doing differently that allows their kids to grasp these ideas?
Also I don’t understand how fractions are difficult concepts. Fractions are easily represented in real life (as in my last post, apples, bananas whatever). We aren’t talking algebraic functions or quadratic equations (yeah, those are based in reality but you can’t as easily present them to a kid as apples, bananas)
So what is so difficult about fractions? Time to get our kids up to speed…maybe Sesame Street should teach 1/4, 1/3 and 1/2′s to them.
October 9th, 2003 at 8:42 am
You’re right Tim. It’s easy to see that if I have an orange with 12 sections and I take five of them, I am holding 0.41666 of the orange.
I also don’t think it’s fair to supposrt your argument with kids in Japan learning calculus in 8th or 9th grade. The only reason they even have to start learning Calculus before puberty is the intense societal pressure to excel.
In my opinion, fraction to decimal conversion is about memorization, just like memorizing the multiplication table. The real tragedy is that people are usually allowed to use calculators for simple math more often than not, so they aren’t forced to memorize useful things.
October 9th, 2003 at 11:33 am
“intense societal pressure to excel.”
as opposed to intense societal pressure to goof off in school and excel at sports cause that’s where the money is?
Maybe that’s something we could use here. Perhaps not to the extreme extent that the Japanese do, but less the other extreme that America stands.