Dividing By A Fraction

[Valmave]

Are children still taught to "turn it upside down and multiply" when dividing something by a fraction ? Its just a phrase that has always stuck in my mind.

[factor-fiction]

I refer to it as 'flipping fractions".
Yes.

[factor-fiction]

Why do you ask, Valmave?

[Prudie]

Thank heavens for that factor, I thought you were going to say some trendy new method.

[Valmave]

Factor - it was just a phrase that cropped up in conversation. I never remember my daughter mentioning it when she was at school, equally she never mentioned logs or tangents ! (Turned out to be a modern languages graduate).

[Prudie]

I don't think they do teach logarithms anymore, not at secondary level anyway.

[jake-the-peg]

They teach logs at level.

The most important reason for understanding logs at junior was to use log tables and the need for that vanished when calculators became generally available.

When I was at school mine was the very last year to use tables and slide rules, the following year a decision was made that calculators were cheap enough and ubiquitous enough that everyone could be assumed to have one and the old slide rules got binned.

Logs are still important in maths but not really in the day-to-day maths that GCSE is meant to aim at