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 believe in 2nd grade I memorized tables from 1-12. Practice makes you quicker with things and as I don’t multiply random numbers often it will take me a couple seconds to recall the answer
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.
Most I just know instantly since I need them for work from time to time and just memorising them is quicker than a calculator.
Grew up in BC, Canada. We were memorizing the table all the way up to 12x12 by grade three. I don’t remember there being a specific limit taught before that…only that we got introduced to multiplication in grade 1, and did more in grade 2. But, grade 3 was when we needed to know the whole thing.
Still not memorized. 7,8,9 still involve doing some quick count by number to get the answer (or using the finger trick for 9)
9s are easy up to 10 because the two digits of the answer add up to 9. 18, 27, 36, 45, etc.
3rd grade. Was pretty easy. Also helped I had nearly a mile walk to school (and back) with no distractions (didn’t think I had even a Walkman yet) so I was able to practice whatever. Math was easiest because it was right or wrong and it was easy to pick 2 random numbers.
Memorized in 6th grade. An optional goal in class to complete the “60 second sweep”. It only went up to 9, but we had to get in front of the class and do them all in 60 seconds.
Mid 5th grade for up to 10. I was slow at it because I did not like the rote learning.
Then a few years later I memorized some 50 digits of pi because why not. I don’t know why I found that amusing.
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
I memorized them. ‘I didn’t feel like it’ was not an option. We did times tables every morning, everyone knew them after a while.
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?
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.
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.
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.
7 was weirdly easy for me, 9 has tricks to at least 10 that can help, but the easiest was probably 2, 5, 10. How? Idk. Brute force probably.
5 alternates between ending in 5s and 0s.
Also Lots of School House Rock.
School House Rock did all the things in its name.
I grew up in Quebec until I was 7, and then moved to Ontario half way through the school year for Grade 2.
In Wakefield we were just starting to learn the times tables. In Ottawa, they were finished with them and were just about done division. I never really got to learn either before learning fractions.
As a result, while i can do quadratic equations and fractions in my head, I often struggle to reason out multiplication or division.
Much easier when I learned you just take the previous number and add + whatever to it.
5 X 8 = 40
5 X 9 = 45 (40+5)
5 X 10 = 50 (45+5)
5 X 11 = 55 (50+5)
5 X 12 = 60 (55+5)This is how my brain processes stuff. I’m absolutely stupid with basic math. I count on my fingers to this day. But practically speaking I can take benchmarks and then add a number.
For instance, I know that 6x6=36. Instantly I know that in my head. But 6x7…I will pause. I think I know what answer sounds right, but I don’t “know” it instantly. So I take my 36 and add 6, and confirm in my brain its 42.
Its dumb, but it works. Everybody thinks I’m good at math because I understand math concepts. I’ve studied as far as calculus. I’ve analyzed number data in business. I can do all that but still need help with my basic arithmetics. It’s worked for me so far.
I thought it was supposed to be rote memorization though. When you were asked “what’s 5x12?” Did you go through 12 iterations to arrive at the answer?
Don’t need to. 5x11 is easy, 55. So *12 is 60. :)
I also use the repeated addition/subtraction method, and found that once memorizing just 3 key points, I was faster and more consistent than those that tried to memorize the tables. 65, 95 and 12*12 is all you need
I didn’t use this method as a kid, but I do use it or something like it pretty often to solve the math formula that my phone requires to turn its alarm off because that can go up to 15 and I don’t have above 10s 100% well memorized. I can get 10, 5, 1, and 2 of anything pretty quickly, so 11 is 10+1, 12 is 10+2, 13 is 10+5-2, etc. I don’t think it would have met the speed requirements of my times tables tests back in elementary school, especially because I was probably slower on my 2s, 5s, and addition back then, but 2-3 iterations is generally few enough that I can close the alarm before it gets too loud/annoying, even in a half-asleep state
The moderator has become the moderated. I’d love to see what was said here.
LOL - the automod went off the rails for a few minutes, should be back to normal now. Stuff is being restored.
Never really memorized it. I just calculated it in my head, unless I had a calculator accessible. It’s slow, but gets the job done.
I got quite fluent in matrix multiplication for a while during my university years. That’s what linear algebra and no calculator exams does to one.
