Living Museum of Learning
Joking Enning
Two days in a row, she tried the Grade 4 course challenge and scored 25/30. Today she moved up to Grade 5—and somehow scored 25/30 again.
We both burst out laughing.
Donald offered a rough diagnosis:
“It seems that 1/6 of your foundation is shaky.”
Then came the evidence.
While doing a long-division problem, Enning encountered:
82
- 62
----
19
She had first written 20, then somehow changed it to 19.
When asked why:
“...?...? I thought borrowing 1...?”
Not a joke. 😂
A little later, Donald posted another mysterious specimen:
300
× 27
-----
At this point, Enning's family had good reason to be nervous.
The funny part is that these mistakes are exactly why Donald doesn't want her to learn mathematics—or programming—by rote. If the procedure is memorized without understanding, one tiny forgotten step can send the whole calculation somewhere unexpected.
And that is also why today's programming homework was unusual:
Rewrite the Gomoku code from scratch.
Not copy it. Not modify it. Understand the algorithm well enough to make the code appear again.
Enning smiled when she heard the explanation.
She is learning an important lesson:
When you understand the structure, you can rebuild it. When you only memorize the moves, you're doomed. 😂
