Methods similar to this go back thousands of years, at least to the ancient Sumerians and Egyptians. But is this really the best way to multiply two big numbers together? Around 1956, the famous ...

break down (partition) a number using your understanding of place value recall times-tables up to 9 x 9 multiply by multiples of powers of ten Multiply each of these numbers by the 1-digit number and ...

This summer, battle lines were drawn over a simple math problem: 8 ÷ 2(2 + 2) = ? If you divide 8 by 2 first, you get 16, but if you multiply 2 by (2 + 2) first, you get 1. So, which answer is right?