Penny Gaines wrote:

Banty wrote:

In article , toto says...

On Mon, 28 Feb 2005 10:25:22 +0000, Penny Gaines
wrote:

Banty wrote:

4 x 8 .... ? I dunno... I think it's somewhere between 28 to 36. No,
it's not 36 because that's 6 x 6 and I know that one. Okay lemme see: 8
+ 8 = 16. 16 + 16 is, um, (6+6 is 12, air fingers to carry the 1 ...
1+1+1= 3...). Got it!

I break it down to 2x8x2 = 16x2 = 32. Always have.

4 x 8 = 32 - I know that one. It is when it comes to things like

8 x 7 = (7**2) + 7 = 49 + 7 = 56

You mean (7*7) + 7 don't you?

That's the Fortran (and probably other languages) way of expressing
"7 to the second power", which would be "7 squared".
[snip]

Yep, that's what I was thinking.

Oh, but if you're on a time trial with math facts, all this cleverness
doesn't
help as much as having the facts down cold. And having the facts down
cold in
life gets you...... gets you...... Help me out here, Dorothy

Gets you more chances to get a job as an astronaut. At least it did
according to the books I read in the 1980s, which were probably published
in the 1970s.

Depressinly, one of my kid's newly published books talks about how
"when you are grown up there will be people living in space".

Hmm - there "are" people in space - just not as many of them as
we guessed there would be. Personally, I think that when more
non-government agencies find a need to put people there, it will
start to get more crowded.

Martin

It
sounded just like the books I read when I was growing up. And they
were wrong :-(.

--
Penny Gaines
UK mum to three