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Comment by manifesto | Hacker News Reader

One reason why Chinese have less difficulty remembering and using these numbers than the western fellows might be the difference in pronunciation. In Chinese, all single digit number has the same structure: a consonant plus a vowel. For example, 7, in Chinese is pronounced as [ch-i:], while in English is pronounced as [ˈsɛvən]. Also, every digit takes the same time to pronounce. For example, a string "123456" is [yi:, er, san, si:, wu, liu]. That, in my experience, makes a long string of number easier to read out. And easier to read out means easier to memorize.

A side node: In China every kids in their elementary school if not kindergarten can recite the "table of multiplication". That is, they can remember the answer from 1 * 1 to 9 * 9. I doubt how many westerners can do so, due to the language difference.

Edit: The asterisk symbol is driving me nut.

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This is accurate. I was educated in a bilingual environment since young and remember strings of numbers (credit card numbers, telephone numbers, identity cards) much easier in Mandarin than in English.

For example, this is a small part of the multiplication table:

English:

six times five equals thirty-five

six times six equals thirty-six

six times seven equals fourty-three

six times eight equals fourty-eight

六五三十五 (liu wu, san shi wu)

六六三十六 (liu liu, san shi liu)

六七四十二 (liu qi, si shi er)

六八五十六 (liu ba, wu shi liu)

---

one times one equals one

two times two equals four

three times three equals nine

four times four equals sixteen

five times five equals twenty-five

一一得一 (yi yi, de yi) (de == "gets")

二二得四 (er er, de si)

三三得九 (san san, de jiu)

四四十六 (si si, shi liu)

五五二十五 (wu wu, er shi wu)

I left out the tones for simplicity.

After a while, the mandarin multiplication table becomes like a poem to recite, while the English counterpart doesn't quite have the same ring to it

sorry for nitpicking, but 5 times 6 is 30, and 6 times 7 is 42

Well isn't that embarrassing. Thanks.

Errors:

6 * 5 = 30: 六五三十 (liu wu, san shi)

6 * 8 = 48: 六八四十八 (liu ba, si shi ba)

Memorizing the times tables (up to 12·12) is standard in American schools.

Yup (but sometimes up to 10x10)

Of course, we would only need to memorize (10-x) items for the x table, except 1x anything, which is trivial

so, know 2x2, 2x3, 2x4, 2x5, 2x6, 2x7, 2x8, 2x9 from 3, you can begin at 3x3, then 3x4, etc

to be more advanced you only need to know up to 5, and do the rest with math... 97? easy peasy. (5+4)(5+3) = 55 + 53 + 45 + 43 -> 25 + 15 + 20 + 12 = 72

(there are other tricks you can do)

Well, that's an example of the time-memory tradeoff, right? It takes a lot longer to calculate 9·7 that way than it does if you've just memorized it. The real question is where to draw the line with respect to diminishing returns on memorizing products for larger and larger numbers.

all 9s..in multiplication take second muliplicand subtract one and that is the first digit of the answer..now take that first multiplicand and subtract that first digit of the answer and that is the second digit of the answer

memorizing without knowledge is for chumps!

> where to draw the line with respect to diminishing returns on memorizing products for larger and larger numbers

Everything from 2 * 2 to 9 * 9 where the second number is greater or equal to the first, i.e. 36 combinations. But it would also be good to memorize sums from 3 + 2 to 9 + 8 where the second number is less than the first, i.e. another 28 combinations. So we'd need to memorize 64 combinations from 2,2 to 9,9 where we'd know whether the result is addition or multiplication from the ordering of the numbers.

you wrote 9 * 7 then proceeded to calculate 9 * 8. I find the 9s easy to remember. simply take the other number, reduce it by 1, then add the complementary that together sum to 9. for 9 * 7, this is 63,

Ouch, true

Yeah, I know this trick for multiplying by 9, but I wanted it to be generic

(As pointed by several commenters, this is the multiplication of 9x8 not, 9x7)

Yup, but it's easy to forget. Most Chinese can remember 9x9 up to a very old age.

This is Malcolm Gladwell nonsense and not backed up by the fact that Chinese-Americans who learn English first (e.g. Nobel laureate Steven Chu) do just as well as their Chinese counterparts.

But we're talking about an entire country in which most people don't speak English at all. If I have to tell my 55 year old aunt to go to www.hotmail.com then I'd have to spend half an hour describing what English letters to type.

I can imagine it's something like explaining how to change some obscure setting through a GUI interface over the phone, but significantly worse.

On one hand you have: "OK, do you see a button in the lower left? Click that. Now press "Options", then "Configure". What? You don't see those? Which button did you click? ..."

On the other hand you have: "OK, do you see the button that looks like a squiggly line? It's in the top-leftish corner, between the button that has a circle with a small line through it and a button that looks like a comb. Press that one three times..."

It's not about being good at math, just at memorizing numbers. I'm Chinese American and was considered to be "good-at-math" in grade school, but damned if I can remember long sequences of numbers. Maybe I should try thinking about them in Chinese.

Most people I know have several bank account and credit card numbers memorized. It's the same for me, and I also remember my phone number from when I was 4; but not the area code!

I think there is a cultural bias in the U.S. against remembering numbers, but that people are generally able to do so. Memorization tends to happen naturally through use: it's easier for me to remember a bank account number after making deposits over a few months than by purposefully memorizing it, for instance.

Memorizing times tables used to be common in UK schools. They stopped because it doesn't appear to help children understand what multiplication actually is.

It is probably going to come back because of our current minister of education's liking of memorization.

Similar education fads regularly sweep through America: http://www.vox.com/2014/4/20/5625086/the-common-core-makes-s...

Personally, I find them to be a distraction from the much more important issue of changing the cultural outlook on education, particularly regarding parental involvement and supervision. Trying to optimize pedagogy is analogous to curing a disease rather than preventing its occurrence in the first place.

I find certain higher level concepts become much easier to grok when you've drilled/memorized the layer below. When I tutored calculus I found that most people rely struggled with the algebra, for example factoring and binomial expansion.

I think there is actually value in memorization. Even in the age of google.

My kids' school went away from drilling for times tables when my oldest two were in elementary, in favor of a new math program that would "help them understand what multiplication is". The result is they struggled with math ever after because the mechanics of solving more complex problems was constantly interrupted by not having the needed basics.

They since changed to a more balanced approach: some memorization, some conceptual.

Personally, I've come to the point that I think they should fully embrace technology and make math completely about the conceptual while letting tools generally solve the mechanical. There is no reason a seventh graders needs to be challenged in algebra because they don't remember their times tables.

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