typical academic talk?

[metahoss]

Those who have sat through their share of Powerpoint might enjoy this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL_-1d9OSdk

Comments

[subjectivity]

that's pretty funny. It looks more interesting than most of the Powerpoints I've sat through anyway.

But I saw this in the sidebar as a related video and I thought it was very cool. Did you know about this trick?
http://www.youtube.com/v/IIWmlcwFaVU

[metahoss]

That's cool...it's the same thing as regular old multiplication, just represented pictorially. Do you think some people would understand it better if they learned it that way?

[subjectivity]

yes! absolutely. I know counting blocks always helped me...but I think this method is a little less straightforward than those.

[tevarin]

Wow, that is cool.

I'd never seen it before, but it seems a bit like the First-Outside-Inside-Last algorithm from middle school for multiplying binomials.

I like Alan's suggestion that it might be helpful for people who had trouble learning the school-standard way to multiply large numbers.
It might feel natural for some culture that didn't develop their number system along the same path we did.

I can imagine possible applications for odd computer designs where this graphical method might require fewer circuits or cpu cycles than the usual methods computers use to multiply.

[tevarin]

*Laugh* pretty good. I love the citations. (Ch, '91) and that he had an extra slide of equations to respond to a particular question.

I wish the resolution of the movie had been higher so I could see the details on the graphs.

[tevarin]

Yeah, the part with the extra slide was spot-on. I wonder if the questioner who prompted that slide was in on the joke.