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> Borrowing isn't even a New Math idea. Borrowing and base 8 weren't created by New Math. Teaching them to students, at least according to the song, was part of New Math. Lehrer sp…

> The "new math" part of the problem isn't that you do the base-10 subtraction differently. It's that you're expected to be able to do the same subtraction in base 8 too. That's th…

> Well, you can't take the ten's complement of the number being subtracted, because it's infinitely large. One obvious difference between subtracting 3 and adding ...99999999999999…

The whole point of the song is that Lehrer thinks that teaching it as borrowing is so different that it makes it incomprehensible to people. > But I already pointed out that the st…

Yes, he's mocking the idea of teaching borrowing. He gives the way he thinks subtraction should be taught in the intro. It's a way that, as far as I can tell, hasn't been taught in…

The song "New Math" is actually funny to listen to, I think most people don't pay attention to what's happening in it. In the first verse, he's mocking the idea of teaching kids th…