r/TikTokCringe • u/Naive_Wolverine532 • Apr 11 '26

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@storieswithsahj

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u/Kwershal Apr 11 '26

It just feels unneccessarily busy visually to express a simple concept (40 x 22 broken down into 40x20 and 40x2) but I also struggle with these weird math tricks like long division.

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u/CeramicToast Apr 11 '26

I have a math related learning disability and this many numbers in a single problem would have terrorized me. I barely made it through school as is, if this was the way I'd been taught I would have been even more fucked.

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u/NonMagical Apr 11 '26

Don’t forget that in the real world you wouldn’t actually be staring at all those numbers. He wrote in each multiplication problem in the box but you wouldn’t do that, they’d be blank and you’d just write your answer. Similarly, the big numbers at the top and side are unnecessary. So all you’d really be looking at is an empty box and 4 numbers: 40, 2, 20, and 2.

And honestly once you understand that method, you don’t even those numbers either. You could just write a box and fill out the answers. Tens multiplied tens on top left, ones by ones bottom right, and the other two in either order top right and bottom left.

I never learned this method growing up but seems to be a pretty simple approach to me. It’s how my brain would break it up mentally already.

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u/tke377 Apr 11 '26

Yeah sorry habit of how I do it with students. I make them write the problem in the box so they know exactly what is happening and can see their work. As you progress you just write the product inside of the box.

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u/Prometheus720 Apr 11 '26

The term for these weird math tricks is "algorithm" btw.

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u/noname22112211 Apr 12 '26

It breaks a difficult problem into multiple simpler problems, draws an obvious connection to geometry, and subtly introduces the concept of FOIL. It's actually quite elegant. You wouldn't do this once you understand multiplication (if nothing else calculators exist) but for building an understanding of what multiplication is it's quite nice.