Reading, writing, and 'rithmetic

[radegund]

[cross-posted to Who Teaches Whom?]

The Oyster has been immersed in two things lately: (1) maths, and (2) writing books. I want to note down some of this stuff before I forget it, because it's cool.

Maths

Following on from this post, the 1 2 3 5 4 thing sorted itself out pretty quickly (without intervention, incidentally). The synaesthesia

Comments

[leedy]

At first he decided that the highest number was called Niall

I LOVE this.

[erisian]

The pattern/transformation he noticed, e.g. 6+6 = 12 transformed to 72 (because we're putting the initial number in the "ten slot", i.e. 60 +12) can be expressed as "any number doubled and added to itself times ten is the same as twelve times the number", or:
n + n + 10n = n times 12.

Thus it works for all natural numbers. It sounds a lot more prosaic described that way, but the amazing thing isn't really the fact that it works but the fact that he noticed the pattern. Which is absolutely amazing.