This is a good thing to remember if I wind up teaching.
As an aside, I'm fairly adept mathematically -- I did all manner of statistical analyses and volumetrics and other middlin' complex math for my degree, and, as a long-time Champions player, algebra is what I do to relax and have a good time.
When I took Calculus at CSUMB, I had an instructor who liked to "get under the hood" and go into a little more detail about the underlying principles than students outside the math/engineering/physics arena usually get I'd taken calculus before, so he was covering familiar ground -- but the additional detail he gave made stuff that I already knew snap into focus, and make everything make more SENSE.
Your description of number arrays and the use of the term "square number" instead of just "square" just did the same thing for me, with a concept as basic as exponents.
no subject
As an aside, I'm fairly adept mathematically -- I did all manner of statistical analyses and volumetrics and other middlin' complex math for my degree, and, as a long-time Champions player, algebra is what I do to relax and have a good time.
When I took Calculus at CSUMB, I had an instructor who liked to "get under the hood" and go into a little more detail about the underlying principles than students outside the math/engineering/physics arena usually get I'd taken calculus before, so he was covering familiar ground -- but the additional detail he gave made stuff that I already knew snap into focus, and make everything make more SENSE.
Your description of number arrays and the use of the term "square number" instead of just "square" just did the same thing for me, with a concept as basic as exponents.