u/ussalkaselsior

Regular toy boy turned into a crossbow using duplos.

I've seen this picture posted many times in multiple math subreddits and the critiques are ignorant of the context. Math people should be the last people in the world to criticize this.

Math people are eminently familiar with the educational structure of not being allowed to use theorems stronger than what has been covered yet. This is what teaches people how math builds from fundamentals and gives them exercise in these fundamentals.

In elementary school, they take a kind of axiomatic approach here. The definition of multiplication they are taught is that a × b = b + b + … + b (a times). Then \*in a later section\* they "prove" that a × b = b × a and learn the word commutative. They do this usually through some kind of math manipulative involving grids of objects. \*Then\* they can use the commutative property to shortcut things.

A elementary school teacher marking this wrong is no different than when I teach calculus and a student pulls out L'Hopital's rule in chapter 1. If I simply taught the mechanics of taking derivatives without explaining where they come from and then taught them to find limits by using L'Hopital's rule that would make me a very bad teacher, despite the fact that it is a simpler way to use the most common tools.

One could argue that it would be simpler to introduce multiplication and give them the commutative property immediately, but that ignores the psychological context in which the students are working. Many of them are still getting used to addition when they're introduced to multiplication. It's easy to lose sight of this when you are so high above this level of math. Fundamentally thinking about it as a well-defined and structured addition problem before connecting it to a geometric picture and giving them the option of doing it one way or the other just works better educationally.

Furthermore, it introduces to them at a low level that math builds on fundamental definitions and then shows that things are true from those definitions. The whole point of the teacher having the grading criteria they have is that they're not just teaching math as a set of arbitrary rules, but are focusing on the contextual meaning of the notation along with the fact that theorems can be constructed that are useful in solving problems faster than the strict meaning of the notation. Math people are the last people that should be criticizing a teacher marking this wrong. Math people are the ones that pushed for this educational structure in the first place and for good reason.

Inspired by another post. For explanation, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Shanks_(archaeologist)

My kids love using the Legend of Zelda art book as a reference when building. I love raising part of the next generation of Nintendo fans.

I am a teacher. I worked at schools in the past and was underpaid. But I switched to working from home through freelancing platforms, and it made a huge difference. So, I advise every teacher to apply to online schools or work through freelance platforms. And if you get stuck during an interview, you can use an AI platform like InterviewMan to help structure your answers and boost your confidence.