• Eatspancakes84@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    1 day ago

    Yeah your education failed you. What I am effectively doing is “factoring” 17*18 into (10+7)(10+8), before working out the parentheses, but it’s easier because you only work with numbers and not with x’s. A nice in-between step towards algebra.

    • lime!@feddit.nu
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 day ago

      yeah that’s what’s so interesting. like obviously i can see the steps with actual numbers but replace with unknowns and it’s 50-50 whether i would be able to do it. and since i work with optimisations every day, i have had to reconstruct this stuff from first principles without a theoretical understanding so i need to go the long way around every time.