a quick math challenge

[Katie Wasserman]

Quote:I teach 9th grade Alg 1, and am happy to report approx 80% of my students rember the 2, 3, and 5 rules. Cannot figure out why they can't remember the by 6 rule!

Very interesting that we seem to have a real split in people's experience with this. I wonder how we could conduct an unbiased poll on the general population's knowledge of divisibility rules. No doubt that the US will be low on the list of industrialized countries as far as percentage of population that know this, but within the US I suspect it might be very different region by region.