Mathematics

(also called “General Math”)

This page is focused on the math you learn in the first eight grades. The upper boundary will be a bit hazy, because there is a good chance a person in those grades will learn about things that were considered “Algebra” and “Geometry” back in the 1980’s.

You probably learned about Counting and Counting Numbers from a song (1, 2, 3, …) and one web page suggests that zero is taught in first grade. Your first encounter with Negative Integers may have been a game where they let you “go into the hole” and then you wanted to win (add) to get your way back out.

You may have first learned about Fractions when you looked at a ruler and saw , and between inch markings. It probably took some time to get used to adding fractions and multiplying fractions, and hopefully when multiply fractions you learned about a multiplicative inverse.

Following Fractions, it would have been natural to introduce Rational Numbers.

I’m guessing the idea of using a symbol for a Variable and letting the variable hold a value must come up. These ideas, introduced in Algebra, are necessary for computer programming.