0

Sometimes, a math question may have multiple steps to it. For example: enter image description here

In this 3 examples, the question is asking the person to solve multiple steps in the problem. It's not like a traditional math problem of this type, where there are only two numbers to be added together.

The example I have given shows 3 addition problems. But it could take the form of subtraction or multiplication as well: enter image description here

The terms I have seen are long math, long addition, long subtraction etc. Are these the correct term (or at least the terms which will be most widely understood)? If there isn't a correct term, then what's the best phrase to use.

Audience: Students (of all ages, including adults). I am making worksheets for my classes and just looking for a good term to describe these problems.

big_smile
  • 109
  • 2
    i think a good term would be ALGORITHM , you can teach your students step by step proof and call it the ¡algorithm of solving.. such operation – Jose Garcia Sep 03 '22 at 13:40
  • 3
    I don't like the subtraction problem because nested subtraction means addition of some terms, so the question may lead to confusion. I've not seen that before and I think it's not a good question. – Adam Rubinson Sep 03 '22 at 14:54
  • 1
    What are the answers you are expecting from your students for the subtraction problems? – John Douma Sep 03 '22 at 15:22
  • 5
    Welcome to Math.SE! <> "Steps" are not really a thing in mathematics. Here, specifically, you're asking about addition/multiplication with "more than two operands." I don't recall ever hearing these called anything but sums and products. <> Separately, as Adam and John note, subtraction and division are not associative, so expressions with more than two operands are not well-defined. (E.g., $(1 - 2) - 3 \neq 1 - (2 - 3)$, so asking students to evaluate "$1 - 2 - 3$" is an invitation to ambiguity and confusion.) – Andrew D. Hwang Sep 03 '22 at 16:07
  • 1
    Sounds like you're asking about arity. Young students might be first introduced to operands with an arity of 2, e.g. adding 2 numbers. When generalized to arbitrarily many arguments (numbers), it might be described as $`` n\text{-arity} " ,$ where $n$ is the number of arguments. – Nat Sep 05 '22 at 04:43
  • 1
    For example, adding arbitrarily many numbers together as part of one operation could be called "$n\text{-ary}$ addition". – Nat Sep 05 '22 at 04:47
  • 1
    BTW, in case any students ask: yes, $n$ can be $0 ,$ $1 ,$ or $2 .$ This is, it's not exclusively about adding many arguments together, just arbitrarily many. And if a student might find the concept of adding zero numbers together as odd and ask why it might be done, then you can say it's a computer thing -- for example, a computer told to sum together the total price of all items a customer bought in a store might sum zero numbers if a customer didn't buy anything. – Nat Sep 05 '22 at 04:51

0 Answers0