Much of the Internet "debate" about algebra seems to stem from lack of awareness of what the subject is (versus the arithmetic method it was long ago) #algebra#mathedhttps://tinyurl.com/2p9myzt5
@KeithDevlin
It seems you haven't read any of the debates. You said "you are no longer doing algebra, you are doing arithmetic" - precisely! And the debates are around whether "implicit multiplication" is a rule or not (it isn't). Without fail every person who gets the wrong answer (this is a high school Maths question with a right or wrong answer, no "it depends" answers) has forgotten the rules of Terms and The Distributive Law, and THAT is what the debates are about. https://dotnet.social/@SmartmanApps/110897908266416158
@KeithDevlin
P.S. I would presume you are familiar with the concept of "teachable moment". Well, maybe you saw this as a "teachable moment" about the history of algebra, which is fair enough, all good. But the people are ACTUALLY arguing about the rules of Maths, and so it is a teachable moment about the actual rules of Terms and The Distributive Law (which many adults have forgotten about). And I've subsequently had some of them thank me for teaching them the correct rules.
@SmartmanApps Actually, my main point was that the arrival of modern mathematics at the start of the 20th Century changed the entire game, and eliminated the need for all those old calculating rules, with arithmetic becoming essentially a subdomain of algebra, based on axiomatically-defined modern numbers.
"Algebra Rules rules", if you like 🙂
[I was on the MSEB in 2001 when they published "Adding It Up" to accelerate the change.]
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