Algebra - now folks, there's word to send chills and shudders up and down many a spine, young and old alike!
For the old, there are distant shoddy memories of sitting in cold clammy classrooms doing endless meaningless manipulations of letters and numbers.
"Okay everyone, do exercise 7b ... all the odd numbers!"
The answers to all the even numbers were in the back of the well worn, dog-eared, hulking-great text book.
For the young of today, sadly, the experience is not too dissimilar. Sadly, many teachers are ill-equipped to make the experience of algebra an exciting one.
The heart of algebra is recognising patterns, generalities.
The fish and chip shop up that there road. Chips $2.00 Fish $3.00 Hamburger $4.00
lets see now, I'll have 3 lots of chips.... aah 5 fish, and uuum .... 2 Hamburgers
Chinese attendant scribbles down on scrap of paper:
$2 x 3 + $3 x 5 + $4 x 2 = $29 thanks
Now this fish and chip shop worker has just done algebra whether he or she knows it or not.
The cost of chips times the number ordered, the cost of fish times the number, the cost of hamburgers times the number, all added up.
t = 2xc + 3xf + 4xh (usually written as t = 2c + 3f + 4h)
where t is total cost, c is the number of chips ordered, f is the number of fish, h is the number of hamburgers
Now what would you like? 7 chips, 10 fish, 20 hamburgers (you'll get fat on that lot I can tell you!)
Shut up and tell me the total cost!
t = 2x7 + 10x3 + 4x20
t = 124
So that'll be $124 please ....
Whaaat!
Now question: What does c mean?
A: chips
B: the number of chip (portions) ordered
Answer is B
Eeeh darn .... we have just put up the price of hamburgers to $5 ... that will put cat among peeogins
heck as like ... simple
t = 2c + 3f + 5h
aaah
next please!!
aah well I'll have 1 chips, 1 piece of fish and 1 hamburger (cheapstake!)
$10 please
2 comments:
You've have simply opened up a whole new world to me Frankie boy. I never knew there was such a thing as a fish and chip shop!
I always thought algebra was a bit fishy!
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