Frazz by Jef Mallett for September 10, 2008

Man, was I that kid.

I was like that too. I could converge on the solution to simultaneous equations by ‘feel’. When the Head of Maths (who had taught us to do dead reckoning and mental arithmetic) got a new job, the replacement teacher was freaked out by me. I could also do logarithms to four significant figures and square roots to six or seven digits.

It was scary how the skill faded away within about 8 years through lack of practice.

I was that way with grammar. I was once the only person in the class who passed a test consisting of sentences. We had to say whether or not the sentence was properly constructed. I got them all according to how they sounded to my ear, but if you asked me to parse a sentence giving nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, etc, I would have been totally lost. However, I can see why Mrs. Olsen insists that her students show their work.

If I doo the athletic in my head, and get the right answer, why does it matter?