SUMMERTIME MATH

"And I'm the best in my class at math," enthused my eight year old friend who lives right across the street.

"Really,Chen Xi," I answered. "Here's a question for you then."

I thought better than to throw him a lob ball. After all, this kid speaks four languages, reads chapter books in both French and English, and uses words like infectious and substantial.

"OK...try this one. If I gave you 9 candies every day for a week, how many candies would you have?"

"Well, I think you trying to ask me what 9 times 7 equals and we haven't taken that yet in school. But I do know that 9 times 9 is 81."

His little brain was churning.

"Now, if I take away 2 nines from 81, I should have the answer. So ( a long pause here with eyes closed), if I take away 18 from 81 that makes 62. Is that it?"

"Well, it's actually 63 but that's close enough," I replied. "But that's great. I loved how you figured that out."

"It's called problem solving, Uncle Mike," he said.

I could only smile at his insightfulness.

"What about 13 times 10? Can you do that?" I asked.

"Too easy. Just add a zero to make 130."

Then he rambled on. "If you multiply by 100, you add two zeros, by 1,000, three zeros, by 1,000, four zeroes. Say did you know that 1,000 is really 10 to the power of 4."

I just about fell off my chair. The kid knows about exponents in Grade 2. I couldn't believe it.

"Wow, that's great Chen Xi. What about fractions? Can you do them?"

"I can reduce fractions. Just give me one."

"OK. Reduce 18 over 12."

Again a silent pause as his wheels began to turn and then...

"The answer is 9 over 6."

"Great answer but I think you can reduce it even more," I said gently.

"No, the answer is 9 over 6," he insisted.

"Well, actually it's 3 over 2 if you divide both the top and bottom numbers by three," I corrected.

"You mean the numerator and denominator."

Now he was one doing the correcting.

"I get it. 3 over 2. That's like one and a half." His eyes were shining with delight.

I could see that this was ordinary kid.

"OK Chen Xi. It's time for a math trick," I said, accessing my dormant file of math stuff.

"What's a math trick?"

"Kinda like the way you multiplied by 10. Call it a short cut," I explained. "Now, let me show you how to multiply by 11."

"We can't do that yet. My teacher said."

"Sure you can. 22 times 11 is is 242.  33 times 11 is 363. 44 times 11 is 484. Can you see a pattern there?" I asked.

"Looks like you add the two digits together like 2 plus 2 is 4 and then stick the 4 in the middle of the numbers you're multiplying so it's 2-4-2."

"Exactly," I responded. "That's it. You've got it. So what's 36 times 11?"

"396," he answered uncertainly.

"And 26 times 11?" I continued.

"286," he said. "But I'm confused. What about 55 times 11? You just can't put 10 in between the two fives. That would make 5105. That doesn't seem right to me."

I was stupefied by his observation.

"Actually," I explained, "the answer is 605. When you get a two digit number, just add the extra one to the first digit."

"So 66 times 11 is 726," he shrieked. "I've got it."

With that, he jumped off his chair on my front porch and raced across the street to see his father who was doing some weeding on his front long.

"Dad, dad," he shouted. "What's 66 times 11?"

Stay tuned.

I think I'm in for an interesting summer with my little friend.