Estimating square roots in your head
There&#x27;s a lot of these math &quot;tricks&quot; or &quot;shortcuts&quot; that sound crazy at first listen, but then with practice, they turn out to be quite useful. I forget what the most recent brouhaha was called, but when I finally read up on what this &quot;new&quot; math being taught was, I just rolled my eyes. The problem with the recent teaching kids shortcuts to me was that they were seemingly only teaching the shortcut rather than teaching the long way so there&#x27;s a proper understanding before teaching the shortcut.<p>In high school, I participated in an event called Number Sense. 10 minutes to answer up to 80 questions. Catch was no scratch paper, no errant marks, no erasing, no modifications for anything. If you tried to turn a 7 into a 9, it was marked wrong. squares and roots were common. 3 digit numbers multiplied by 3 digit numbers. lots of things that once you knew the shortcuts made it very possible to do this.