I can remember doing sums of squares on an ibm tabulator… it had no multiply hardware and was programmed with plugwires… it used repeated addition in a loop to multiply ie
5^2 = 5 + 5 + 5 + 5 + 5
Lots of machine cycles with large numbers, but it was a lot better than doing it on a mechanical calculator.
Maybe multiplication should be taught as repeated addition.?
I was taught multiplication as multiple additions when I was 6 or 7, with small cubes - looking like “Lego” (but still had to learn multiplication tables, of course - they were written on the back of all children notebooks, we had tests on that). Not you ? Note: My school was in France.
Note: You used “power of two” notation. If I remember well, “power of” came later for me (when I entered the 6th class, at 11 - I don’t know the British equivalence of this class).
No, we had no lego blocks… just learnt tables by chanting them . … and we learnt how to use the tables when multiplying multidigit numbers.
Australian education in the postwar years was traditional British system. Lots of discipline.
Rote learning
Was typical in the uk for maths tables
Now subject to debate to know if its any good or not.
Its really interesting to look at the difference in teaching and learning between the uk and france. Not just in maths but things like verb tables in the language.
There are many changes, i dont always think for the better. I tried to help a young friend with his school maths homework and my system from 50 plus years ago is no longer used, he could not understand my method neither could I understand his.
We did learn also tables by chanting them. Lego was used to explain multiplication (4x4 lego explained 16 for example, we could count all of them). Different country, different method, but result is hopefully the same.
It worked for me. Most of my Uni exams were passed by simply writing out lecture notes and textbook passages to instill it in my memory. It was only with subjects I really clicked with, that I could rely on understanding rather than memory.
That changed later in life. At some stage I seemed to be able to work things out rather than look them up… that is when maths really became attractive to me.
I may have been a late developer. Some people seem to click with things more easily than I did.
I think computer use helped me to learn to think.
My secondary teacher of maths was my favorite, he challenged me with more and more difficult calculations pushing me hard, he also taught computing. It was difficult at the time. But now I very much appreciate his efforts. His work gave me the possibilities to fo,low my dream, even now I think highly of him.
If only the other teachers had been as inspiring…
Oh… Languages are so different (English and French) that education in verbs cannot be similar… For mathematics, maybe the difference is not so far. And yes, I am 60, and sometimes I don’t understand today education, but I don’t want to go to the “before was better” mantra…
I think I liked mathematics (for example vs history/geography) because memory is not the main factor; We can deduce most things from a few theorems… Maths is for lazy people like me 
By the way, I loved philosophy too, I regret it was not in education programs earlier (I mean age) in France… IMHO, we need more of it to build our brain.
It was never in my school in the uk either.
Looking at my french girlfriends grandchildren homework at junior schools I am amased at the quantity, compaired to when i was in english schools even secondary.
In France, Philosophy is only teached last year of secondary school (called “terminale”), and is part of the “Baccalauréat” exam. 4 hours/week, if I remember well… From Platon to Kant, this was a kind of enlightenment for me…
You are like me. … maths and philosophy have some appeal, at least now in my old age ( I am 79)
I feel that one’s view of the world affects the sort of life one has… and I think that applies to whole societies too. The dominant mental outlook of a country affects what sort of country it becomes. Politicians dont pay enough attention to it
Have you read
“Sophie’s World” by Jostein Gaarder
There is an English translation, dont know about French?
The original is Norwegian.
I suspect the age of most of the team on this site is aound retirement, not sure if that is a reflection of linux users or we now have time to be available to help others
I did not read “Sophie’s World” ( “Le Monde de Sophie” in French). I did not know what to ask for Christmas, this one looks good, I will get it
Age is totally off-topic. Torvalds is 54, I was born 6 years before him… At least he (and I) understands C, likely much better than young ones (who may prefer a different language, for good or bad reasons).
Have you tried ChatGPT with debugging a C program?
According to your LLM theory, GPT may be able to write a C program ( by copying other programs) but it could never debug a faulty program. Correct?
I never said that… I tried ChatGPT on programming, like asking for a macro for a reverse lookup in Linux kernel lists… Terrible, all wrong. Not only wrong, but very dangerous, with possible memory leaks when concurrent access (broken list)…
My first and last try.
Today I’m on a conference again, the same guy presented different AI stuff.
Now it was a digital customer support, call center or such…
What it did (live demo): accept call, discussing about a problem, agree with the imaginery customer on a scheduled time, and the first free timepoint of the guy assigned, and put into his calendar.
More scary: it could initiate a call, tell about a possibly interesting opportunity,
if the called human (himself as demo) showed interest, it told more details, then scheduled a meeting in the calendar according to the whish of the called human.
Oh boy!!!
Brave new world is here.
As this is fresh, not a memory from months ago, I remember the service:
There was another demo, creating silly AI musics:
That seems, humans are sentenced to do the dishes, not the art…
I think what these gpt users are calling art is not creative art… it is more like clever fakes.
Dont take offence, but what language was the ai in ?
Think before you said some had to be in english… just wondering about language skills for AI does it flip depending on the users ?
The phoning thingie was still in english, but he told hungarian support is coming very soon.
But the songwriter composed some songs with hungarian lyrics!
And listening to it, it would be hard to spot the difference from a todays hit in the radio. At least my ears grown up on jazz and classics, could not spot real difference from any of the over-electronized todays hit songs…
It sounded quite real, the overall stupid and funny text with awkward rhymes (which was here kind of intentional, as the song was about not to forget to fold down the toilet seat) - so the stupid content could make the song suspicious to be fake, but otherwise it sounded real.
I was shocked again.