Keep Change Change

Here's another one of these stupid memory devices that I guess some pre-algebra instructors use to get their students to hobble through their class, but then put them on the wrong path later on. It's a reminder specifically for how to subtract a negative number: +9-(-4) = +9+(+4) = 13, or -3-(-6) = -3+(+6) = 3, stuff like that. The "keep change change" mnemonic supposedly gets them to cancel the two juxtaposed negatives (and not the one in the first term).

But like PEMDAS, this sets up a terrible habit, and masks the real meaning to the writing. The actual story is that a negative functions like multiplication, and flows left-to-right the same as we read in English. Yes, students in algebra are routinely stumbling over negatives in general and the subtraction most of all. But when I try to clarify it, usually some student now goes "oh, it's keep-change-change". Then I ask them to simplify an expression with three or more terms in it, like +9-(-4)-(+3), and at that point they have no idea what to do. They don't see that juxtaposed negatives are cancelling out, just like a multiply. The mnemonic that get them through pre-algebra with only two terms at a time was a waste, and has set them up for failure later on.

I've only heard this brought up by students in the last 4 years or so (not before that). Initially I suspected that the mnemonic was specific to where I teach, because the initials happen to be the same as our school. But when I do an online search it does show up in a small number of hits elsewhere -- well: actually just once at algebra-class.com and then once as an answer to a Yahoo question (possibly  those two items might be written by someone that went to our school?).

So my question: Have you ever heard of this "keep change change" nonsense anywhere else? Did you ever hear it before, say 2008?

Are Parentheses Multiplication?

Are parentheses multiplication? My remedial algebra students will pretty universally answer "yes" to this question; I guess they must be taught that explicitly in other courses. I'm pretty damned sure that the answer is "no", and I try to pound it out of them on the first day of the class.

Even professional researchers exploring common mistakes in algebra education are prone to saying "yes" to this question, for example:

Misconceptions: Bracket Usage -- Beginning algebra students tend to be unaware that brackets can be used to symbolize the grouping of two terms (in an additive situation) and as a multiplicative operator [Welder, "Using Common Student Misconceptions in Algebra to Improve Algebra Preparation", slide 7; references Linchevski, 1995; link]

But are parentheses a multiplicative operator? It seems clear that the answer is "no". Now clearly all of the following are multiplications of a and b: ab, (a)b, a(b), (a)(b), etc. But notice that the parentheses make no difference at all in this piece of writing. These are multiplications because of the usage of juxtaposition; any two symbols next to each other, barring some other operator, are connected by multiplication. Obviously, if there were some other written operator like + - / ^,  between the a and b it would be something different; but granted that multiplying is probably the most common operation, we read the absence of a written operator to indicate multiplication.

The chief problem with telling students that parentheses indicate multiplying is that they then routinely get the order-of-operations incorrect. Assuming a standard ordering ([1] inside parentheses, [2] exponents & radicals, [3] multiply & divide, [4] add & subtract), students want to perform multiplying with any factors in parentheses in the first step, before exponents. One of the first and frequently repeated side-questions I ask in my class is, in an exercise like "Evaluate 2+3(5)^2" -- "Yes or no, is there any work to do inside parentheses?" On the first day of algebra, almost the entire class will answer "yes" to this (and want to do a multiply), at which point I explain that the answer is actually "no". If there is no simplifying inside the parentheses, then the first piece of actual work will be to apply the exponent operation. And that's all that parentheses mean. (There is of course a multiplication here -- not because of the parentheses, but because of the juxtaposed 3, and it must take place after the exponent operator.) A majority of the class will pick up on this afterward, but not all -- some proportion of a class will continue to say "yes" and be confused by this particular question throughout the semester. (As another example, some students are prone to evaluate something like "(5)-2 = -10" for this and other reasons.)

Whether a factor is juxtaposed next to something in parentheses or not is irrelevant to the multiplication; parentheses are a separate and distinct issue. What say you? Have you ever said that the parentheses symbols actually mean multiplying?

Quaternion Anniversary

170 years ago today, Sir William Rowan Hamilton had the flash of insight on how to extend two-dimensional complex numbers to cover 3- and 4-dimensional space, in the form of quaternions -- in particular the rather sticky problem of how to make their multiplication work reasonably. This occurred while he was walking with his wife along a canal, to an academy meeting in Dublin, Ireland. And to insure that he didn't forget the insight, he famously took a knife and wrote the formula into the stone of Brougham Bridge as he walked underneath it.

This summer I had the good fortune to visit Dublin, and my partner and I took an afternoon to make the hike and find the plaque commemorating Hamilton's discovery. (It's about a 3-hour round-trip walk outside the city, beside the utterly enchanting Royal Canal. Quicker if you have a car, of course, but we do everything on foot.) Eureka!

You Are Now Entering a Region With a Logarithmic Scale

Armagh Observatory Astropark, Northern Ireland, UK.