“I got it – this makes so much sense to me because putting the line under is the skip a few for division!”
“Oh no!” eleven-year-old Eleanor Ludlow said as she realized that her five-year-old baby brother Robert Edward Ludlow III was on her friend Velma's phone with their friend Louisa Dubois Chennault.
Louisa was a math prodigy, and Lil' Robert loved talking to her about math because Louisa was too young – just nine – to know that there was no way that her fellow math genius was too young – just five – to properly grasp the concepts she was sharing with him.
“So basically, Vertran is too young not to know to make that particular hookup,” eleven-year-old Velma said about it. “Life is hard when you are in single digits – you just don't have perspective. Cousin Vertran is super-smart too, but he's just nine and just didn't know that he has now created a math monster.”
“I gotta go get my family ready,” Eleanor said. “Rob on fractions? I just gotta go get my people ready.”
Eleanor was right. It was about to be a whole situation.
“Listen, the way fractions work show me I was right about the skip a few because nobody has time – you gotta draw a line and that's what fractions do in division, because, see, ain't nobody got time to divide anything but a cake or a pie, so, see, if they give you a 3 and they want you to divide it in 4 parts, ain't nobody got time for that, so, see, you draw a line under that 3 and put that 4 down there and that's it. You leave the fraction there and go on with your life because, see, ain't nobody got time but the power of the skip a few is in the line! Get the number you need to divide and just underline it! Throw any other number under it and then boom – done!”
“How are we going to even fix this?” ten-year-old Andrew said.
“Nope,” Eleanor said, and then went to their grandfather Capt. R.E. Ludlow and drew a line in the dirt with her toe between him and their grandmother Mrs. Thalia Ludlow. “Sometimes, we gotta let Rob be right, hand stuff off to our adults, and leave it alone.”
“Well, I'll be,” ten-year-old Glendella said. “Rob is right … kinda. I mean, there are big fractions that nobody ever can write as a long division so we do leave them as they are, and there are things where you do have to draw a line and let stuff go. He is right … he's just skipping a few steps in his understanding.”
“I mean, this is like the longest mental long jump ever!” Andrew said.
“Not really,” Glendella said. “Wait until he gets old enough to fill in the steps … and gets this excited and running wild on every step.”
Eleanor and Andrew looked at each other, and then at their grandparents.
“Y'all got it,” Andrew said.
“Just gotta draw that line,” Eleanor said, and the three oldest Ludlow grandchildren went to work on the jigsaw puzzle in the Lee house.
“What just happened?” Mrs. Ludlow said.
“I don't know,” Capt. Ludlow said, “but, to the extent that Robert is right, we do have another budding math genius on our hands. At five, we wouldn't expect him to understand what fractions are for compared to long division and even fractions in terms of how we manipulate numbers, but he is right: they are a kind of shorthand so we can do other calculations more easily. This means that he is much closer to the abstract thinking of algebra and calculus than a five-year-old mind generally is. That also tells us something else. Adding is 'skip-a-few' counting, and multiplication is 'skip-a-few' adding. He's shockingly good at both, but he doesn't like subtraction, or division – except now he has found a way to skip what he doesn't like about division through fractions.”
“Rob was neglected, so, he's had too much of having too little – he doesn't like to take things away,” Mrs. Ludlow said. “But he divides very well, actually – show that boy a cake or pie, and he will work a fair slice for everyone.”
“It is remarkable, how he gets that part of it – division in terms of making sure everyone gets enough of enough,” Capt. Ludlow said. “Perhaps we can open his mind to subtraction by means of what he does like about division, because division is just 'skip-a-few' subtraction.”
“Yep, I think that's it,” Mrs. Ludlow said. “This also tells us that like Grayson in geometry, both of them are going to get past us in math skills pretty quickly.”
“Yeah, Grayson was working out perimeter and area figures with Legos yesterday and I was just floored to watch him do it, looking him at understanding that since all the main Lego units are the same size, you can work out any algebra problem using whole numbers that can be expressed in geometry by just building it out unit by unit. By the time he learns about fractions from Lil' Robert and they get into the pile about that … yeah, we're going to have to invest big time in math tutoring just like the Duboises do for Louisa.”
“We gotta draw the line and divide up a fraction of our money to make this work,” Mrs. Ludlow said. “Lil' Robert does understand how things work, after all!”