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Comment by singpolyma3 | Hacker News Reader

As someone who never memorized these tables and has a degree in mathematics... I don't agree

That's actually impressive, I'll grant you that. You must have a larger than normal working memory to be able to load so many operations onto your memory stack.

The tables are really not hard to memorize, for what it's worth, and it's very useful in every day life to know them.

You used a calculator every time you needed to multiply or divide simple numbers while reducing matrices to echelon form in introductory linear algebra? Or when doing simple arithmetic necessary to find integrals and derivatives in calculus? I bet you in fact did have those tables memorized, even if it wasn't a conscious effort.

I wrote long columns of galloping additions in the margin because calculators weren't allowed.

I mean yes, I have some "facts" in my memory because of repeated exposure. I know 2x2 and 5x5 but the whole table? Not a chance.

I guarantee you that you've memorized these tables, you just didn't put any effort into deliberately doing it. It happened accidentally as you used numbers frequently.

Of course, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you DO need to use a calculator to quickly tell me what 8 * 6 is. But I would be highly surprised if you got a degree in math and still needed a calculator for that.

For 8*6? I definitely don't know either of the 8 or 6 tables by memory.

I of course know how to figure it out. Let's see my instinct might be to do 8x2 first because I do know most of the 2s. Then 16x3 I can do in a few steps of addition. 20+12+16 then 48

And yes then I checked on my calculator because I'm posting this online and don't want to look like an idiot.

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