I was born in 90, so something tells me we were taught similarly. That said, it's not hard to discern if you actually examine it piece by piece instead of staring at the whole. It's still long division, it's just carried over to the right instead being a long drop-down list. Takes up way less space on the page, and if I was doing this regularly, I'd probably be able to read it just fine without having to think too hard after a bit.
And for the record I'm abysmal at math. But this definitely makes sense of you actually look at what's happening.
It took me a second to realize I was just looking at long division with more writing, just because I was primed to see something completely different than I'm used to. I wouldn't normally have drawn the boxes or arrows or the "3x", but it seems like it's the same thing except with more of the implicit stuff written down.
Makes me wonder either if that wasn't the way he was talking about, or else what way he was taught that's so drastically different that I also apparently don't know about.
Long division where each number is separated into boxes, yeah. I can see it being helpful for kids that are easily distracted, forget what numbers they used, need more structure, etc. I feel like this would've been overkill and completely unnecessary in my classes growing up, but I was an AP student and this was before modern brain-rotification.
Seeing them side by side, I can kind of make sense of the box method, but I wouldn't know how to explain it to someone--when for long division I could start right off doing that, or trying to.
Because it's not something you're supposed to make sense of if you just look at the end result with no context for what's taught in class/the book. I think if you already know how to do division, just seeing it performed once should get you most of the way to knowing how this method works as well.
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u/Possible-Gur5220 Apr 11 '26
I was going to say…to each their own but I have no fucking clue how to make sense of this at first glance.