So for context, I went to first grade in mainland China before immigrating to the United States, in China, they teach kids this weird trick that’s basically like reciting a “poem” thing, which I didn’t remember what it was called until I recently googled it. Its apparantly called the “九九乘法口诀表” or 9x9 Song / “The Nine-nine song” (Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_multiplication_table#The_Nine-nine_song_text_in_Chinese).
So like… in 2nd grade, for which I was in the US, multiplication was very easy for me, well… at least up to 10x10. Like idk how to explain it to someone who’s doesn’t speak a variant of Chinese, and even the rhythm only works for me in Mandarin somehow, when I try to use Cantonese, which is the language I speak at home in the US, I cannot replicate the rhythm to make thay thing work, this “Poem”/“Song” is only available to me in Mandarin, like when I think about multiplying together any 2 single digit number, I instictively use the “九九乘法口诀表”.
Like its goes from 1x1 then next lines are 1x2, 2x2, then next are 1x3, 2x3, 3x3, then its 1x4, 2x4, 3x4, 4x4, etc… you get the idea, mutiples of 1, then 2, then 3. So if I need to multiply something by 7, I can start from the line where multiples of 7 are. Sometimes I can remember the exact phrase of it like for example 3x7, without starting from 1x7, then 2x7, then 3x7.
Like I never thought too hard about it, it kinda just became the “normal” way I do multiplication. But someone asked a question on Lemmy about reading analog clocks and I probably didn’t answer their question correctly but that was when I kinda was like: oh wow I forgot that my way of multiplication is probably different from everyone else in the west.
Like if you told me to teach a English-Only speaker on how to do multiplication tables, I… um… I don’t know how I would teach that, the “九九乘法口诀表” doesn’t have the rhythm in English so I doubt converting the it to English would work.
Like even though I speak English as my primary language now, and I barely have any fluency in Mandarin or even Cantonese which I speak at home (and never learned any vocabulary beyond the basics), the “九九乘法口诀表” multiplication thing is always done in mandarin somehow, like its always been stuck in my brain even after all these years in the US.
TLDR answer to my own question. I do it using “九九乘法口诀表” which takes me 1-2 seconds to recall a specific line, so basically, anything up to 10x10 takes about 2 seconds for my brsin to process, 11x11x to 12x12 takes about 5-10 seconds, anything bigger and I just giveup using my brain and pull out a calculator. I memorized 10x10 since first grade, then 12x12 probably by like 2nd grade or maybe first half of 3rd grade.
How do y’all do it, is it easy or hard?
Edit: Okay so the best way for me to explain “九九乘法口诀表” is that: Think of PEMDAS (order of operations), but its for the entire multiplication up to 9x9.
I was 8 years old when I learned the multiplication table and I honed it through repetition over the next couple years. Everyone in our class had a multiplication table taped to the upper left corner of our desks. I think it was optional. Not required. It was more of a fashion statement at the time, showing who had a “Trapper Keeper” because we’d cut that multiplication table out of the corner of one of the folders that the trapper keepers came with. So it was in style at the time in the mid 1980s. In idle moments I’d study it. It was fascinating as I began to notice the patterns and the magic of the math and it was fun to learn & memorize. Grateful to learn that in my youth because my brain would not be so pliable & spongelike these days.
I for sure learned the 11 times tables first and best. Up to 10.
One of the very few teachers I remember (I’m 68) was Fred Ross due to how effectively he taught me the times tables and more. That guy for months on end drilled the times tables into our heads by repetition. There were no calculators or internet then so it was the most effective way and it worked too.
He also posed a question that to this day I have not found the answer. An English only word with the letter q in it but no u after the q. Can only be a regular word not a name or a city.
Parents got me this plastic grid with buttons containing the problem and when you pushed them, the translucent plastic would show the answer. I memorized them pretty quickly. Not sure if it was the right way to learn but it stuck with me.
we just went to 10x10, and I think we did that in like 2nd grade. so like 8yo. we just had to straight up memorize it, no helpful song or anything. We did it in sections though, so one day we were supposed to memorize 1x1 to 1x10, another day 2x1 to 2x10 etc.
I can remember 11x11 because it is annoyingly 121 not 111, and 12x12 is 144 which I find kinda easy to remember because of gaming monitors using 144hz (I don’t get why my brain makes those kinda associations, it just works for me idk). 11x12 is weird because it is the first multiplication where my brain starts picking it apart like 11x12 = (10x12) + (1x12) = 120 + 12 = 132
I also remember 144 being particularly pleasing. Also because it was the biggest number on the table.
Rural US in the 1980s and we learnt it starting at I think like 8-9 years old. At the time 9x9 was all we learnt and we were just expected to memorize our “times tables”. I don’t recall any song or anything.
I was born in 97, also expected to just “memorize” the tables. I never did, and despite my teacher in 3rd grade insisting we would never have a calculator on us at all times, I do in fact have a calculator (phone) in my pockets at all time to do menial math for me.
I was out doing parking lot and road striping doing all the math in my head or on paper to make fit things in, make sure we were square to the curb occasionally, etc. as a young adult. IIRC, the spots were 7-8 feet wide (depending upon what the client wanted, but I think our normal was 8) so knowing your times tables (or, more accurately, multiples of 8) when running down the tape measure made things easier. Pythagorean theorum for checking square to the curb or some other fixed point. More fun math (that I now forget) for doing things on curves.
This would have been 2001, I think, and we probably had a calculator bouncing around somewhere in the truck, but we never used it. No smartphones or tablets in those days.
I still sometimes just go wherever without my phone (more often on accident, but occasionally on purpose), but I definitely don’t find myself doing math on the fly too much, heh. Imma go be old somewhere else now.
Learned them about age 6, up to 12x12. Still know them, and takes a lot less than 1-2 seconds to call them to mind.
Except 7x6 and 8x6 which, for some reason, I’ve never been able to learn so I always end up going from 6x6 = 36.
it’s 7x8 that always gave me a slight delay
American I think by 4th grade we had to know up to 12 x12
For me I memorized all the self multiples then would subtract or add mentally
Ie 5 X 7 =? Well 5X5= 25 And 5X2=10
so 5X7 =35
So half route memorization half transative properties of multiplication
really? how long ago was that?
20 years ago in Ontario I remember doing multiplication table competitions in grade 6 classes, so I assume we didn’t need to fully know them before then
I went to primary school back in the 00s
This tracks for me too, around 4th or 5th we memorized 15x15. I don’t remember them all now, but I can get it with a few seconds of thinking/doing it in my head.
I had the typical American experience of sitting with my dad every day for a couple weeks crying while he repeats "WHAT’S SEVEN TIMES THREE
9+10
As long as you work with decimal numbers, there is no need to actually go beyond 10x10. Heck, even 9x9 would suffice, as times ten is just adding the zero. Anything else is derived from that.
Have you ever used a clock before? I don’t want to assume how you tell time.
You need multiplication tables to read a clock? Interesting.
Analog clocks.
If the hour hand is pointing just past 1, and the minutes hand is very near 8, what time is the clock showing?
answer
It’s 1:40
Now, ofc, it’s becoming somewhat of a lost art, with the increasing prevalence of digital clock displays, so, yeah. Personally, I just developed an intuition for it, having grown up in a time when digital clock displays are rare, and analog clocks are commonplace.
EDIT/PS:
Actually, even in that case, reading off the minutes hand off an analog clock doesn’t involve the times table for 12, so your original claim holds.
And now explain to me why you need your multiplication tables go to 12x12 instead of 10x10 just to multiply 8x5.
Sorry, I added it in the edit.
Actually, even in that case, reading off the minutes hand off an analog clock doesn’t involve the times table for 12, so your original claim holds.
Sorry, but: where in that is multiplication involved?
Reading off the minutes from where the minute hand is pointed. If the minute hand is pointed at 8, you’d have to multiply 8 by 5 to get 40.
And if it’s pointed to 37, a prime number? Do you have to have your tables memorized up to 37x37 to be able to read that?
It’s knowing how to count, at best. But out of curiosity, do you really go “long pointer at 8, 8x5=40” internally when reading the clock?
I’d imagine most people would just go “40”.
Case in point: in school, we learned how to read a clock before we learned anything at all about multiplication.
I haven’t seen a “37” in an analog clock.
There’s a 7, there’s 8, and there are four spaces (which may or may not be marked) in between them.
Now, to the main topic:
But out of curiosity, do you really go “long pointer at 8, 8x5=40” internally when reading the clock?
No. But that’s because due to experience and exposure to analog clocks all my life—which, again, is not something that should be assumed nowadays. When I was taught how to read analog clocks (preschool or very early in primary school, IIRC—so, yes, before I was taught multiplication), I was told to “count by fives”. Hence: 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55 and 00.
Now, when we were taught the multiplication table for 5 (maybe it’s just my teacher) we revisited how to read off minutes from the clock (digital displays are still rare back then).
I just memorized it to be the fastest and get candy, I was a fat kid, and memorizing the single digits is necessary to do math in your head? I never understood how to use my hands and i cant hold a visual that well, like 3 apples become 5 become 1 become a truck in the span of a second
I want to say we were supposed to learn them in second grade in Canada, but I personally never did. My memory isn’t good enough, so to this day, I just work it out in my head. For small numbers like 1-12, its easy enough to break it down to smaller parts and solve quickly anyway.
Same here. Nobody ever noticed, so why even bother with memorizing if I can calculate it fast enough.
Because it functions as a base for doing slightly more complicated math in your head.
If you don’t have 7x7 memorized, it’s a lot harder to do 77x70.
But we have calculators… everywhere
Which is totally fine if you do calculations like that every once in a while. If your job or hobby requires frequent multiplication by not-nice numbers, it can be extremely convenient to be able to do this kind of math mentally. Even if it’s just a couple seconds, it can be really annoying having to “switch gears” to grabbing a calculator
It’s also really nice to just be able to do grocery store math without pulling out your phone. Are the 12 packs or the 24 case cheaper?
And that’s probably one of the few remaining uses of mental arithmetic I have nowadays. I also got to practice rounding up numbers for estimating whether or not I’ve got enough money for groceries. It’s easier to keep up with a running total in my head if they’re nice (rounded-up) numbers instead of being surprised at the total cost at the end.
I would have no fucking chance in American places that add tax at the till instead of on the sticker.
Im good at keeping a running total in my head and even figuring out if the 2-for-1 on premium brands works out cheaper than 1 super-budget and shit like that.
If im trying to add 17.5% on top of everything I think id just die.
It’s honestly not that hard to memorize your times tables. You do it once in third grade and it stays with you for life.
I use it daily, personally. Comes up a ton in gaming. How many of these can I afford? Etc.
Chess is a good one. No calculator allowed. You have six minutes to make 9 moves, how many seconds per move? And don’t take too long because the calculation eats into your time.
I also just work it out in my head. There are certain “landmark” numbers and tricks that I use to save time. For example, 9 times any number is easy: multiply by 10 and subtract once. x11 is similar. Same with anything close to a perfect square. (7 x 8 = 7 x 7 + 7)
I think that memorization was important to achieve speed before phones/calculators. Nowadays, I would consider memorization an obstacle to understanding.
As a teacher, no, memorization is an important step before understanding. I do agree thought that in the times before memorization was a bigger emphasis, but that’s because it was understood that the only information you’d have easy access to would be what youve memorized since we didnt have the internet. Now we teach kids in Literature class how to vet their sources because they are all exposed to the misinformation vortex.
I think a lot of the backlash against rote memorization is the rote part. Without understanding what you’re memorizing—treating the times table as a list of sequences (times table for 2, and then 4, and then 5, etc), the mental load memorizing it becomes unbearably high.
In my case, I was lucky enough to have been made to understand what’s going on (4 groups of 8 items = 40) before being asked to memorize the times table. The visualization also helped me memorize, as well as some tricks (what’s 6×7? 6×6 = 36, right? add 6 to arrive at 42) that as I memorize more and more of the table, become less and less necessary.
Memorization of key facts is required for the development of higher reasoning. For example you can not understand global trade if you have not memorized basic geography.
Key facts, sure. If you don’t know geography, no amount of reflection can provide you with the location of Hong Kong.
However, i can figure out anything on the 12x12 timestable in a few seconds, no memorization needed. I don’t even need the landmark numbers that i mentioned because multiplication is just repeated addition. The only things i had to memorize were the numerals and the operators.
My dad played a kind of patty-cake growing up where I practiced doing times tables in rhythm. My dad would pick the addend and set the pace, and we’d alternate left and right hand high fives while saying say multiples of four. 4 8 12 … 36 40, then we’d just switch to 7’s, slightly slower pacing 7 14 20~ … if i made mistakes - 21, let’s try again: 7 14 21 2…8 35 … no reprimand for error - we had a beat to keep, just take a downbeat and try again. Of course simpler numbers were taken further 3s were occasionally done out to 300, and 2s were done as fast as I could spit out the words. 5s were often the rest set, done at a basic pace.
The madlad had me polishing my 13×13s before school ever even mentioned the existence of multiplication.
That sounds like a fun way to learn.
I did it in Cantonese, probably similar to the Mandarin poem.
I think my mom started making me memorize it in the last year of kindergarten (I was 5yo). By the time multiplication becomes the main topic in primary 2 (2nd grade) maths, I didn’t really have much problem doing them. It was really useful to have it recited.
I was only taught up to 10×10 in primary school, and learned mostly by rote (and also, “skip counting”). I’ve also heard of some techniques like matching fingers to do one-digit multiplication, but I never really learned how to do that. By that point, I’ve mostly memorized the multiplication table up to 10.
For 11, it’s absurdly easy once I got the technique, just double the number (up until 9). 11×10 is just appending a zero, and 11×11 I just memorized.
For 12, I actually didn’t bother that much? 12×N = 10×N + 2×N. Thus, 12×11 = 110 + 24 = 134 and 12×12 = 120 + 24 = 144 (which I got memorized for some reason).
I still have some trouble with the 6, 7, and sometimes 8 multiplication tables, but I can usually recall it with a bit of effort. Not much, but not without some awkward pause.
Now, for how I got to memorize it. The process was hard at first. I had to recite the multiplication tables as a drill almost everyday. We also had long quizzes (hundred items) of one-digit multiplication and two-digit division (by the fourth grade), so there’s an incentive to memorize the tables if only to be able to get through those quizzes with minimal pain. There’s also a social stigma for being the last person to get done with those quizzes (or worse, running out of time), so there’s that pressure too.
