On the Japanese Multiplication Method. A father-and-daughter dialogue

TL;DR

This paper critically examines the so-called Japanese multiplication method, highlighting its limitations and educational value, through a dialogue inspired by media portrayals to clarify misconceptions about multiplication techniques.

Contribution

It provides a critical analysis of the Japanese multiplication method, emphasizing its educational utility and debunking misconceptions propagated by media reports.

Findings

The method is not a revolutionary shortcut but a visual representation of basic multiplication principles.

Media often uncritically promote the method as a shortcut, leading to misconceptions.

The dialogue format clarifies the educational value of traditional multiplication learning.

Abstract

Recently the media broadcast the news, together with illustrative videos, of a so-called Japanese method to perform multiplication by hand without using the multiplication tables. "Goodbye multiplication tables" was the headline of several websites, including important ones, where news are however too often `re-posted' uncritically. The easy numerical examples could induce naive internauts to believe that, in a short future, multiplications could be really done without the knowledge of multiplication tables. This is what a girl expresses, with great enthusiasm, to her father. The dialogues described here, although not real, are likely and have been inspired by this episode, being Maddalena the daughter of the author. Obviously the revolutionary value of the new method is easily disassembled, while its educational utility is highlighted to show (or remember) the reasoning on which the method learned in elementary school is based, although mostly applied mechanically.