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Ten seconds of math

mental-math-trainer.com

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Re: Ten seconds of math

#111

Post by bkanber »

rkwz wrote: post #88
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #5

When I was near the end, I pressed backspace to clear my answer, and it wound up navigating me back to HN, wiping out my results. (I hate backspace-to-go-back. It's the worst feature in a browser. Is there a way to turn it off?) This mental math exercise is a cool and fun concept! Good execution.

> I hate backspace-to-go-back. It's the worst feature in a browser. Is there a way to turn it off? I love this feature. Makes browser navigation keyboard friendly. Different strokes for different folks I guess.

I really like Cmd+[ and Cmd+] for back/forward. Also because Cmd+Shift+[ and Cmd+Shift+] are tab prev/tab next.

Re: Ten seconds of math

#112

Post by sopooneo »

dghf wrote: post #106
dsfsdfd wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Mental arithmetic is the ability to move numbers around in your head, it really is equivalent to being able to type as a programmer. Mental arithmetic is to number theory as being able to type is to programming. That you do not understand this, shows that you too have been damaged by the standard teaching of maths within education - pre university level.

> Not really. Yes, really. "Arithmetic is the branch of mathematics dealing with integers or, more generally, numerical computation" -- http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Arithmetic.html > Mental arithmetic is to number theory as being able to type is to programming. To paraphrase you, number theory != mathematics. (But number theory ⊂ mathematics, just as arithmetic ⊂ mathematics.) > That you do not understand this, shows…

I think this is one of the many cases where you emerge out the top of an ideath to come right back to where you started at the bottom, but for different reasons.

I grade school many are taught that math === arithmetic. Then they get to interesting stuff in high school and college and realize arithmetic was just a tiny part of the story. So many at that phase are emphatic about refuting what they were told early on about arithmetic being math. Then when you calm down from that notion, you can get back to realizing that while arithmetic is only a small part of math, it is still very much a part.

Re: Ten seconds of math

#113

Post by akhilkohli2005 »

Champion of addition

setInterval(function() {document.getElementById('question-answer').value = Number(document.getElementById('question').innerHTML.split(' ')[0]) + Number(document.getElementById('question').innerHTML.split(' ')[2]); $('#question-answer').trigger(jQuery.Event( 'keyup', 16 ));},500)

Re: Ten seconds of math

#114

Post by pbhjpbhj »

aaronetz wrote: post #104
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have this on my phone, my 5 and 9 year olds like it! I find the hard level pretty hard - it would be good IMO if you could change the mode to include negatives (maybe roots and squares [+other powers?], like here) and to expand the number range to. I seem to remember someone mentioning (probably on here) that they played a mental maths game where you had to give an operation on a number, you didn't say the answer b…

Thanks for the feedback! If the hard level is pretty hard, wouldn't adding more operations make it even harder? I kept the number range small because I felt it would be too hard to do mentally otherwise, but I'm definitely open to extending it. The idea was novel for me but I was quite certain it has been done before in one way or another.

It would probably make the hard level even harder (assuming unique solutions then definitely) but for the lower levels it would provide a wide range of play styles and so more replayability - I'd probably be more inclined to play intermediate with wider ranges and/or other operations than to play hard in "simple" mode.

Re: Ten seconds of math

#115

Post by [deleted] »

aaronetz wrote: post #104
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have this on my phone, my 5 and 9 year olds like it! I find the hard level pretty hard - it would be good IMO if you could change the mode to include negatives (maybe roots and squares [+other powers?], like here) and to expand the number range to. I seem to remember someone mentioning (probably on here) that they played a mental maths game where you had to give an operation on a number, you didn't say the answer b…

Thanks for the feedback! If the hard level is pretty hard, wouldn't adding more operations make it even harder? I kept the number range small because I felt it would be too hard to do mentally otherwise, but I'm definitely open to extending it. The idea was novel for me but I was quite certain it has been done before in one way or another.

[deleted]

Re: Ten seconds of math

#116

Post by ajkjk »

j2kun wrote: post #73
ajkjk wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience has been that mental math training, while not directly useful, generally seems to improve the way my brain works and enhances my analytic thinking. This effect is a lot more tangible with longer, multi-step problems. In college (physics major) I made a point of doing every integral in my head if I could, and over time I found that my mental 'scratch space' seemed to be getting longer - that I could hold…

General problem solving and critical thinking is good mental training. Timed arithmetic drills are neither, and I really should hope that arithmetic doesn't count as "critical thinking" for the majority of the audience on HN.

No one has claimed that arithmetic trains you at critical thinking. It trains you at a certain kind of abstract thought, and I'm specifically stating that I have found that very valuable.

Re: Ten seconds of math

#117

Post by ajkjk »

Qwertious wrote: post #92
j2kun wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

General problem solving and critical thinking is good mental training. Timed arithmetic drills are neither, and I really should hope that arithmetic doesn't count as "critical thinking" for the majority of the audience on HN.

I have to agree - for all the talk of "mental training", is there any actual evidence that arithmetic drills will actually help with problem-solving and critical-thinking?

My point in the parent post was that I have a lot of anecdotal reason to believe this. Enough to be pretty confident I could find actual evidence, but I haven't looked very hard.

Re: Ten seconds of math

#118

Post by SCdF »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #78
SCdF wrote: post #20

OT: I ended up being mostly fascinated with the FB and Twitter share buttons

Why? I can't see anything interesting about them, they seem stock?

Play the game, and then let it fail so you lose, then look at the FB and Twitter share buttons under your score :-)

Re: Ten seconds of math

#119

Post by bausson »

mkoryak wrote: post #58

I thought that maybe the ranking was real.. no its not function getRank(score) { // TODO we should add a real ranking one day var ONE_BARELY_REACHES_THIS_SCORE = 200; return Math.floor(100 * Math.min(Math.E * score / (ONE_BARELY_REACHES_THIS_SCORE * Math.PI), 1)); }

Damn, and I was so proud of my best score.

Re: Ten seconds of math

#120

Post by nojvek »

Suck at arithmentic. But this took me 20 seconds to write.

setInterval(function(){ $("#question-answer").val(eval($("#question").text())).trigger("keyup") }, 2001);

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