challenge

[burkhard]

(06-22-2018 02:22 PM)Thomas Okken Wrote:  

(06-22-2018 01:17 PM)Don Shepherd Wrote:  As a math teacher of kids who are first learning about operations that include decimal numbers (grades 6 or 7), we teach them to let the word "and" represent the decimal point when they pronounce numbers. So pronunciation of integers will never have the word "and," and pronunciation of decimal numbers will have exactly one "and", pronounced at the decimal point.

so 9,999 is "nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine"
18.7 is "eighteen and seven tenths"
4,566.173 is "four thousand five hundred sixty-six and one hundred seventy-three thousandths"

Most kids catch on to this pretty quickly, and when they later go into the real world and hear people say "six hundred and seventy-five", they still get it.

But what is the point of teaching kids a convention that doesn't match how people speak in the real world? Does anyone not pronounce 18.7 as "eighteen point seven"?

Hah, hah! Thomas has never been exposed to mess of American government school "Common Core" mathematics wherein different curriculum supplier companies (I can't call them textbook supplier companies, because there generally are no textbooks anymore) compete to come up with propriety non-standard and very arcane ways of expressing and solving mathematics problems.

The whole use of weird terminology & methods seems very odd, until one realizes there are literally *billions* of dollars in contracts to the varied state governments. The companies work hard to come up with their own goofy non-standard ways of doing things so that the "costs" of ever switching to another supplier would be very hard. Not necessarily $ costs, but in confusion for the students.

And yes, everyone I have ever heard speaking English says "eighteen point seven".

And in the U.S. we generally use the Oxford comma. At least the nuns who taught me insisted upon it. :-)