Does anyone actually use long division?
I was working on a scene today in which an adult admitted to a grade-schooler that in the real world, you’ll never need to use long division. It’s just something they force on kids to keep them from getting cocky after multiplication.
I nixed the joke because it felt kinda Full House. But it got me wondering if it was true. I doubt I use long division more than twice a year. Most of those times, it’s for want of a calculator, and halfway through the process, I realize I didn’t need an exact answer and should have just estimated.
Thus my question: Does anyone use long division on a regular basis?
Addition, subtraction, multiplication — they answer fundamental daily questions about how much, how often and how fast. Division is all about apportioning, figuring out how to split things up, which in the real world almost always involves some qualitative if not emotional decision-making. It’s all well and good to say that each child should get seven M&M’s, but since Ezekiel can’t eat chocolate, should he get an extra Jolly Rancher?
For the record, I’m not saying they should stop teaching long division. Not quite. Not without some study to show it won’t completely screw up later math education — which to my recollection, never involved long division.
Maybe I’m wrong, and there’s a non-teacher subset of the work force that actually uses long division. If so, write in. I’m curious to see who these Remainders are.
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September 13th, 2006 at 10:37 pm
I use it quite often for daily things when I’m out and about and a calculator isn’t handy. Nothing terribly important. Probably one of the last things was trying to figure out how much a new job would pay each week, as in x/26.
Occasionally I’ll write something out while I’m sitting at my desk, calculator within easy reach – just because I can.
My job deals with a lot of numbers but I rarely have to do any division. Still, I think knowing long division is essential to functioning in society. I think it’s one of those things that we use more than we even realize.
RED
September 13th, 2006 at 10:46 pm
Yes, I’ve used long division a lot this year. At night, I’m a spec screenwriter. During the day, I’ve been known to work as a speech recognition engineer. When calculating stats on applications, I find it’s easier to do long division on a piece of paper than pull up the calculator on the computer and do a bunch of clicks. I really think it’s a necessary skill, one I learned in 3rd grade and have never stopped using. Ask me about calculus and you’ll get a different response.
September 13th, 2006 at 11:25 pm
dont use it much. I graduated in computer science without hardly using it. I worked as a programmer for 10 years in math-ridden areas without using it. I prefer approximating. what do you know.. it’s available in MS Equation 3.0.
September 13th, 2006 at 11:55 pm
I reckon it’s worth while cos learning it makes you smarter. No-one ever uses push-ups in real life, but they make you stronger.
September 14th, 2006 at 12:45 am
I think here in Holland they’ve decided to not teach long division anymore, and concentrate in stead on estimating skills. I’m not completely sure, my kids are to young to be at that stage of maths in school, but I think that’s what they are doing now. I’ll investigate. Also I use my long division skills maybe twice a year…
September 14th, 2006 at 12:48 am
This is a little embarrassing… I never learned anything other than long division. I’ve even had people show me short division and I “get it” but right after I “get it,” I forget it.
So yeah… I just used it the other day to figure out how many pages I need to right per day to reach my deadline.
Just don’t know what to do with that remainder…
Unk
September 14th, 2006 at 12:49 am
LOL. I meant, WRITE per day.
Time to hit the rack.
Unk
September 14th, 2006 at 12:59 am
I think they make kids do it at an early age because then you get to see which kids have mathematical brains and are going to go on to do math related careers like astral physicists and speech recognition engineers and maths teachers.
They make every kid paint with those cheap, dull, hard-powder water colours too (that are of course never used elsewhere, even if you’re a watercolourist painter) just to see if there’s an artist… or perhaps to identify the abused and neglected… in each class.
I think the problem comes from assigning grades to these skills. “No Billy, the Sun isn’t green and there is no remainder for six into 372! You fail! Go to the corner and recite, ‘do you want fries with that?’ until you’re smart enough for a good job!”
September 14th, 2006 at 2:30 am
I work as a buyer. I used to work in a food manufacturing company. I purchased products such as potatoes, glass jars, and alcohol. I generally bought in Tonnes, per 1000 jars, and litres. It’s nice to know how much individual tatties (Potatoes for the non-Scottish) cost. Long division works a treat for this. I only use calculators when I want to write funny words upside down (e.g. 5318008 – Boobies, and 71077345 – Shell Oil (By no means an advert)
September 14th, 2006 at 3:12 am
My accountant brought her son into the office the other day and i was helping him with his homework. It was the first time i’d encountered long division in the 17 odd years since i’d learnt it. I stared at it, feeling thick, thinking, how on earth do you…? 27 into 1023…? I wracked my brain and realised long division had left the building a long time ago. So i taught him a magic trick instead and assured him it may not get him marks but it would definitely impress the girls.
September 14th, 2006 at 3:27 am
Barely use it and checking on reading this, I think I may have forgotten how (those brain cells may have gone down the beer hole).
Maybe it should still be taught though because, if nothing else, kids need to know about remainders in order to understand modulo operations properly, not sure though (fractions may well accomplish the same thing).
(and I like the comment above about push-ups though, hopefully, if long-division leaves the curriculum it won’t be replaced by more time in the sand-pit or finger-painting but by another aspect of mathematics so that kids won’t lose ’smarts’)
September 14th, 2006 at 3:35 am
I rarely use long division in my day-to-day life, although it does come up. A lot of time I’ll want to do a quick division for some reason (usually splitting up the bills between roommates or something equally easy), and a calculator just isn’t in my hand.
I am glad, however, that I was taught how to do long division, otherwise a calculator would be necessary for every simple calculation that involved division I needed to solve.
September 14th, 2006 at 3:39 am
I hated long division as a kid, but I use it quite a bit now. I don’t even know what I use it for. I just know that I can now do it all pretty much in my head until I start playing with numbers larger than three digits, and then I usually just round it off anyway.
Mostly I use it for playing with metric/imperial conversions in my head, as the United States is one of the last three countries in the world to resist going wholly metric.
September 14th, 2006 at 3:56 am
Its valuable to learn to do this kind of thing out the long way on paper, just so that when you do it on a calculator you have some sense of what you’re actually doing. That seems to be the philosophy behind teaching long division where I went to school. You learn how to do it the long way, and only then are you shown how to do it quick and easy with a calculator. You may never do it on paper ever again, but hopefully you’ll understand what you’re doing that little bit better.
That’s always made a certain amount of sense to me, anyways.
September 14th, 2006 at 4:34 am
I use it a lot, normally for figuring out how many containers, boxes, &c. I need. For me, it’s normally faster than finding a calculator. I also count the till without a calculator. I also took my calculus exam without a calculator (and got what I needed to pass the class). Of course, if I’m summing large numbers of currency values (US$40, US$23.20, &c.), I use an adding machine, rather than a calculator.
September 14th, 2006 at 4:37 am
I use it as I’m a physics student, but I suspect that I’ll also be using it when I eventually go to work for the European Space Agency or something (please don’t let me end up as an accountant). If you learn to multiply and divide with your head, it’s actually much quicker than using a calculator. One of my tutors can just divide massive numbers to several decimal places in seconds by brain power alone! I’m sure she’s from some outer planet ala ‘Men in Black’.
Imagine if you had no concept of it though? Which would surely happen should it no longer be taught… We rely on calculators and computers so much these days. I believe that in Asia they use an abacus to teach stuff like multiplication/long division from a very early age. By the time these kids are 12 they can do huge mathematical equations with an invisible abacus. Now those guys are technologically crazy! but they still practice brain power. If the western world continues to rely on technology alone — one day we’re gonna be screwed.
x
September 14th, 2006 at 6:43 am
I actually use it all the time in theatre work, since I never have a calcluator handy — breaking up house numbers, ticket sales, all kinds of things into even parts, averages, and so on. I use it for figuring our gas mileage, all kinds of things that come up in daily life as well. I’m not a Luddite, but I enjoy seeing and feeling how the numbers break down.
And I agree with some of the above that even if it won’t be used in the “real world,” it’s extremely valuable to understand the basic concepts underneath what the machine does. There’s a good piece at salon.com right now about the advantages of teaching BASIC that hits all the right points, for my money.
September 14th, 2006 at 6:45 am
Rarely is anything taught to kids about the content itself. Long division’s more about learning how to follow a series of steps through to the end. A process that with a little faith will get you to the right result every time. eg: screenwriting.
September 14th, 2006 at 7:22 am
I use it almost every day. One obvious reason is because I have kids in school who are using it for their homework, but usually it’s for splitting checks when my friends and I have lunch or figuring out budgets for vacations, or planning my son’s wedding and other small ways every day. Interesting story -I substitute teach and I had to give a quiz one day and the teacher left a note that the students could not use calculators for the quiz. It was 15 multiplication and division questions and it took the entire class 40 minutes to do the test and a lot of them didn’t even finish. That’s really sad.
September 14th, 2006 at 7:25 am
I use it to calculate how many miles per gallon I get after every fill up. Generally I don’t take it to its end, but I use the basic principles.
September 14th, 2006 at 7:38 am
I use long division quite a bit, but barely notice it because it’s usually in Excel.
September 14th, 2006 at 7:51 am
I just went through the whole long division thing with my son via 1st and 2nd grade math.
The curriculum began with the basics. But before long, the kids were asked to estimate the quotient and then use a calculator to check their guess and find the remainder. It’s a far cry from the calculator Nazi/math teacher I had in 2nd grade.
Personally, I don’t use it unless I’m sans a calculator.
September 14th, 2006 at 8:12 am
It’s not always about whether or not you actually use it, you know. Some things you learn in school you will never use. Long division? Hell, when’s the last time you needed to use a cosign of anything? But wouldn’t you rather know how to do it and not need it than need it and not know how to do it?
But the main reason we learn all these concepts is to manipulate our brain into the proper way of thinking. Everything you learn in school helps mold your brain into a machine capable of solving any problem. If you can do long division, you can use those skills to solve other problems you encounter.
How often do most people have to know what dramatic irony is? Not many, but learning it helps them notice things they might not have before, and that makes them smarter in general.
And that’s the speech I give every semester.
September 14th, 2006 at 8:19 am
A lot more people use it than I would have guessed.
In terms of splitting a check, actual long division on paper seems like overkill. This is what usually seems to happen:
But then again, I’m a Hollywood screenwriter, so I never pay for lunch.
I was just in Ohio, and one thing I noticed — which I also noticed in Alabama during Big Fish — is that at every restaurant they automatically asked if we wanted separate checks. Mind you, I’m sitting at Red Lobster with my thirteen-month old daughter.
Yes, the baby would like a separate check.
September 14th, 2006 at 8:36 am
Well it is about time your daughter started pulling her own weight. I mean you can’t support her forever.
September 14th, 2006 at 8:41 am
I use long division every now and then. But I use another pen-and-paper trick even more frequently; I’m sure it has a name in English but I don’t know what it is. It’s used to figure out persentages (if 47 is 100%, how many per cent is 31.2?).
I don’t use a calculator unless I happen to be sitting in front of the computer where a calculator is only one click-on-the-dock away. Come to think of it, I do carry a calculator on me at all times because there’s one in my cell phone. I hardly ever use it and that’s because I rarely need to divide more than one number at a time, perhaps two.
If I’d always had a calculator on hand during my formative years (like in school) I’d probably be more inclined to use one, but I didn’t.
I find it pretty amazing that they’re not teaching long division in Holland anymore (if that’s the case). It’s such a small deal — I don’t understand why they even bother to take it out of the curriculum (unless they’re not teaching the multiplication tables anymore, either). When children have learned the multiplication tables they ought to be able to learn long division in about 5 minutes.
September 14th, 2006 at 9:19 am
I’m also surprised at the number of people that still use it. Are we all sure we’re actually doing long division and not just ‘division in our heads’ (which is usually more to do with multiplication) ?
When i’m sharing a bill with friends i’ll normally think ‘OK, 4 people, bill comes to £47, I know four 12s are 48 so it’ll be just under 12 quid each plus say 10% tip so about £13 each’. I hardly ever (if at all) think ‘OK, £47. Right, 4 goes into forty 10 times remainder 7 and 4 goes into 7 once remainder 3 which gives £11 plus 3 divided by 4 or £11.75 plus say 10% tip so about £13 each’ (even though the number of steps is comparable). Is that really what everyone else does ?
September 14th, 2006 at 10:51 am
I rarely use it. I always carry my fancy Texas Instruments calculator to relieve me from thinking too much.
September 14th, 2006 at 11:30 am
As for me I do long division if I need an exact number to a decimal point, not when ‘pretty accurate’ suffices (like when paying restaurant bill).
Perssonally I think doing long division is akin to doodling.
September 14th, 2006 at 12:04 pm
Don’t know about the others, but when I do long division in my head, I really do visualize that little box and the remainders going up top and all that.
And I feel completely dorky while doing it.
September 14th, 2006 at 12:50 pm
Wow. I’m embarrassed to say I had to think for a moment, “what’s short division?” Which is really what I do in my head. Use short division, that is. I still use long division, if it’s a complicated monetary issue, and I don’t have a calculator.
And I don’t go to dinner with people who want separate checks and/or are too cheap to tip.
Cheers…
September 14th, 2006 at 1:31 pm
I think you all should get back to work.
September 14th, 2006 at 1:39 pm
use it all the time for sq ft. to cu ft. to cu yds. for ordering concrete etc.
September 14th, 2006 at 2:03 pm
Sometimes when I’m stuck in traffic, I divide the first number of the person in front of me’s license plate into the last three. It’s a stupid habit.
I’m a server so I have to use division all the time when people hand me a pile of credit cards and say to split it up.
September 14th, 2006 at 5:58 pm
Funny – I just told my ten year old the facts of education yesterday. “Know your times tables to 12, add and subtract, and that’s all you need to know in the Real World”
“How about long division?” Says he….”Nah, no one ever uses that…”
September 14th, 2006 at 7:59 pm
I usually just do multiplication very quickly and roll the divisor up the multiplication table till I find the approximate answer.
Then again, I was left alone a great deal as a child.
September 14th, 2006 at 8:04 pm
Look I don’t even know what long division is but I know how to divide, and I do that pretty regularly.
September 14th, 2006 at 11:16 pm
Teaching third graders long division is a lot like teaching film school students to edit on a Steenbeck. To tell you the truth, I don’t think I truly understood how all those Avid tracks worked until I had to edit a ten-minute project on a flatbed — then the concepts conveyed by digital editing programs really made sense at a much deeper level. Long division is similar. Without it we wouldn’t understand some of the most basic math concepts we use on a daily basis without even thinking about it: Can I make this recipe for 3 people instead of 4? How do I hang a 5-foot curtain centered over a 3-foot window? If I only laugh at 1 out of every 7 Dane Cook jokes, what’s a $100 ticket really worth?
Without a strong grasp of long division, these questions become more difficult to answer, because we’re just learning the “trick” of how to solve the math problem, rather than understanding how numbers truly work.
Then again, USC just got rid of the Steenbeck. What do I know?
September 15th, 2006 at 8:19 am
Don’t know if this is the right place for it, but somebody should let Craig Mazin know his site has been shnookered. I don’t have Craig’s email, otherwsie I’d do it myself.
September 15th, 2006 at 9:09 am
I don’t understand why people make such a big deal about “long division”. It’s just following the division algorithm until you have the precision you need.
Multiplication is to addition as division is to subtraction.
If you want to find out how many dozens are in a gross, you can either start at 0 and keep adding 12 until you get to 144, or you can start at 144 and keep subtracting 12 until you get to 0. The answer is the same whether you use multiplaction or division. Use whatever is easier for you.
Use it or don’t use it, but please stop complaining about it.
September 15th, 2006 at 9:21 am
No, I never use it! It’s rubbish! I remember from school that everyone knew you would never use long division in real life. It’s bollocks!
September 15th, 2006 at 10:01 am
Yes, I use long division pretty regularly. Partly because I need it once in a while as a patent agent but mostly because I’ve used everything I’ve ever learned. Really. I’ve had two dozen jobs and five careers.
My sixth career is screenwriting. My work placed in a few contests and I’ve been pitching whenever I can. Actually that’s a good example. I didn’t know I’d be pitching movies when I joined our high school’s debate team or when I had to cold call hundreds of employers and go to hundreds of interviews. All of those experiences helped me learn to pitch.
After about my seventh job I realized that I would never know what I would need to know in the future. In fact, most of the jobs I’ve had did not exist when I was in high school.
It amazes me that people still ask these kinds of questions. All you have to do is spend fifteen minutes cruising the Internet to figure out that everything you can learn matters, especially if you’re going to write about it.
September 15th, 2006 at 3:24 pm
i’ve had to divide stuff with an ex. that was long.
September 15th, 2006 at 3:52 pm
I use long division a lot while running to calculate my pace. A longshot explanation in defense of the waitress (who might have been an idiot), if you travel on business, you may want a separate check with just your meal on it for reimbursement purposes.
September 15th, 2006 at 8:36 pm
international travel usually involves multiplication or division when you try to translate currencies in your head. usually you’re ok with estimating, but occasionally when (watch out for yuppism here) trying to determine the wine markup of a restaurant, you end up with a lot of 6th grade math
September 16th, 2006 at 7:56 am
Wow, I never knew so many people were AGAINST using long division. I use it when I need to, which is fairly often because I’m mathmatically curious and like a pretty good level of precision. I also carry a calculator. I figure my day job is accounting so to not have a calculator would be a professional embarrassment. Yes, I’m the mathy, responsible one who always splits up the check.
Then there are the scary math-in-the-head people like my dad who can get to the answer faster than I can use a calculator. Diversity, it makes the world go round…
September 16th, 2006 at 4:48 pm
Currency exchange Save for low priced items or real necessities I use it to convert prices when shopping overseas unless I’m in an extravagant mood. I use estimates after a while or if in a hurry but, since the handling foreign money is mostly gone due to credit cards, it always feels like part of the fun of shopping overseas; especially in bookshops and clothes stores.
Dinner I do as John suggests when in a small group or with people I know well but ‘overkill’ can sometimes feel necessary in a large group with diverse incomes or approaches to tipping.
I am frequently not only the ‘mathiest’ in the group but also the highest earner by some way. Here in Australia the tipping culture is very different from the US with tips seen as a bonus not a given so it’s best not to make assumptions. I’ll use long division in my head – or on a corner of the bill – and round up or down by a few cents. I’ll then say for example “$31.75 plus tip� or “$33 would give a very small tip�. People hand me their money, with or without extra for the tip (usually with) and I bump up my share to ensure a decent tip (if deserved). Also, the ‘good tippers’ may have given me $35 or more and said ‘ask me for more if the tip’s low’. The larger the group the more likely I am to use this method. People like to know what they owe and can then add to it if they want to.
September 16th, 2006 at 5:28 pm
Long division isn’t particularly elegant or enjoyable, but I can’t think of a better way to introduce a child to the concept of “division”. Keep in mind, the way most of us divide numbers in our heads relies heavily on basic Algebra (which students of that age won’t be exposed to for several years).
The way NOT to do it would be handing them a calculator and allowing them to treat it as a “black box”.
September 17th, 2006 at 3:47 am
One of my favorite scenes in “Go” is the opening of the Simon chapter where Simon, Tiny, Signh and Marcus are on their way to Las Vegas. Tiny is trying to entertain the group by telling a story that turns out to be a retelling of a story Marcus told a while ago. The story doesn’t do much to push the plot along but it does a great job of character development.
Long division is like that–it helps kids understand math and numbers and gives them a better context to understand more advanced concepts.
September 17th, 2006 at 10:11 pm
Long what?
September 17th, 2006 at 10:49 pm
I’m guessing that anyone of the gazillions of people involved in making sure residual payments get made use division quite often. Doncha think?
September 20th, 2006 at 3:28 am
I got taught it again upon joining the army to work out antenna lengths when changing frequency (and even then I generally just estimated because its always raining here in the UK).
But if ever I need an exact answer and I don’t have an actual calculator handy, I use my mobile phone. It must be at least 10 years since I walked into a room that contained people but didn’t contain a mobile phone.
Using my brain would only ever be a last, desperate measure. Funny how that applies to so many areas of my life.
September 21st, 2006 at 1:40 pm
I regularly use division to calculate my car’s gas mileage.
Also, I suspect long division is frequently used in calculating per screen averages.
But in general, I think that you’re right. Most division in everyday life is handled by muliplying fractions. However, you can’t work with fractions without knowing division.
September 25th, 2006 at 7:24 pm
I have several calculators. They are strategicly located to defend me incase of an attack by the division monster. If I ever need to do long division just shot me.
September 26th, 2006 at 12:50 pm
All math is very important and long division! because of Algebra and Calculus. It’s in the world around us and in everything that happens even as I type on this machine it’s happening. Not to understand it is to let objects control us! Happy Calulating
September 26th, 2006 at 1:04 pm
By “long division” I mean the process in which you write the numerator beside the denominator, make a bracket, then sequentially figure out how many times the numerator “goes into” section of the denominator.
Obviously, division matters, but does the process of long division really benefit most people in everyday life?
October 10th, 2006 at 12:39 pm
i never use long division i always just grab a calculater but my teacher just asked me today to do division the long way oh come on its so time consuming…
September 4th, 2007 at 9:25 am
i am not sure but i know if i dont learn it i could fail 5th grade.
October 17th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
I posed this question to my Math teacher the other day (Im in 2nd year (8th Grade)) Will we ever actually use algebra in the real world. Now, I’m a fluent programmer and I once thought, I could program better if I learned algebra in school. But since the start of doing Algebra 1, I realised ,this has absolutely nothing to do with programming, and I see no use for it either. I also posed the same question to my Irish teacher, I like learning Irish, but there really is no use for it in the real world, unless you go to the gaelteacht.. but I doubt I ever will. So do we really need to learn these subjects in school? I think not.. history is the same, we don’t need to learn it, but it is interesting. Long division is not interesting, there are certain parts of Math that are important, why are we wasting time on things that we’ll never use? If we really wanted to learn somthing, we can google it.
-Steven.
November 22nd, 2007 at 1:24 am
i often worry about my dependence on google. if the world wide web crashes one day how will i find anything out? i might actually have to think for myself… oh no!
kt