Mama cows will leave their babies to graze if they need to, especially quite young ones. The not moving is a fear response and is totally normal for calves. If you find one again, just keep an eye on it. If the mama hasn't shown up in a few hours, then I'd start calling people.

I credit this program and math for smarty pants by marilyn burns with developing my own mathematical abilities during the pre-algebra years. It rocks.

I agree with you, especially if all the examples involve multiplication in parentheses. If you're going to teach parentheses, they should be used where they'll change the answer of the problem, e.g. 3-(4+2) as opposed to 3-4+2.

Some introduce it earlier than others. It's in 3rd grade in math mammoth, which I like very much... (or at least it's on their end of year test). But I've tutored students who were in pre-algebra and just learning it for the first time. Parents DO actively complain, and they get told to shut up and let the professional educators handle etc. A lot of them just send the kids to Kumon instead.

Yes. Exactly. This. It's just like how people want to put biology, chemistry, physics, algebra, geometry in little separate boxes. Apply geometry? AND algebra? In PHYSICS?! And then apply physics to chemistry and chemistry to biology? You gotta be kidding me! I just want to know the formula! Honestly if I were writing a math curriculum (which I'm not) order of ops would be introduced (in the multiply, then add) form almost as soon as multiplication was introduced, and practiced in every stinking lesson after that. Because it's one of the foundational principles that you CANNOT go past beginner's math until you master, and it's a skill. Yes, really it is. Learning it well enough that you have not just memorized it but INTERNALIZED it and apply it automatically and without even thinking to any sort of problem you meet is a skill. Just like learning to read well enough that you apply principles to decode words instead of laboriously sounding out c-a-t ... cat every time is a skill. Someone who still has to stop and write down PEMDAS on every page is still at the sounding-out-words stage of arithmetical fluency imo.

On yours, it will be correct. If you attempt, however, to add widget + discounted gidget on your calculator, when the widget is NOT on sale, you will get the incorrect answer. This is because your calculator is apparently a model that can only do one operation at a time.

With a calculator that will only take two operations at once, it does work that way. But if you put those formulas into excel or just paste them into google, you will get two different answers.

It would be correct if they hit equals, but they usually don't. Calculators ARE GIGO. But if you don't KNOW that what you're putting in is garbage, it's easy to get confused. And the more things you're trying to add up, the worse it gets. I would say that knowing and understanding the correct order of ops is actually more important than being able to do long multiplication/division. You can DO mult/div on a calculator if you really can't grok it. But you can't get the right answer out of your calculator if you don't understand WHEN you're adding and WHEN you're multiplying (which is the issue here -- if people think 0 comes out, clearly they would expect that when you add a whole bunch of stuff and multiply at the end it should multiply all the stuff.)

What surprises and pleases me about the conversation here as opposed to facebook is that there are far fewer people vehemently defending their answer of 0. Confusion, yes, but not vehement denial.

No. I've been watching the conversations going on for some time, both here and on facebook. There are many people who thought it was a trick and answered 0. There are people who are utterly and totally convinced that you only have order of operations when you have parentheses involved and otherwise you just move left to right. Enough people have even told me that they were specifically told this by their teachers in elementary school that I am willing to concede the possibility, especially since I have directly and personally seen the math skills of many future elementary educators.

But I do see people make errors like this on their calculators all the time. These are not people for whom math is their thing. These are people who have a home contracting or plumbing business who have to pay someone for even simple things because they can't do their own spreadsheets. These are people who are trying to figure out (if I bought 3 widgets and 5 gidgets and they were all 20% off) will type in the price for widgets plus the price for gidgets and then multiply by 80% not realizing that the calculator they're using will only multiply the gidget price by 80%.

Yep. My father hated brussels sprouts so I'd never had them until I went to dinner at someone's house. I said 'ooh, what are the little baby cabbages?' and they were ... astonished, to say the least.

We do let students use calculators on tests, but they're restricted to a basic scientific model with a non-text display. It is very, very common at universities to either disallow calculators or to disallow graphing calculators because of the potential for cheating.

He's got it backwards. The calculator doesn't care that HE doesn't care about order of operations :D:D

Hmm. How about "Want to bet a dollar?" :D

Since multiplication is done before addition and subtraction, the last 1x0 is 0, then the addition and subtraction gives 14.

On the contrary: Any time you enter something into a calculator, you need to pay attention to the order of operations, because the calculator will. Any time you enter something into a spreadsheet, the same thing. I've had to track errors in the billing spreadsheets of friends who had their own business. The errors boiled down to precedence errors. Any time you take a course outside of math (such as chemistry, physics, engineering, programming) or work in a field where you still need to work with math of any sort, you need to use order of operations to evaluate expressions correctly or even to enter them into your calculator/computer correctly. If you're shopping and you buy 3 widgets which are 5 dollars each and 4 gadgets which are 10 dollars each, your price is 3*5+4*10. Without realizing it, you are using the order of operations to evaluate this correctly.

Re: Showing work. On higher level exams, if the answer is correct w/o work and it's something I can do in my head, I give the marks. If it's incorrect w/o work, it gets a 0. If it's incorrect but I can see that the work was correct and a careless error was made, partial credit. This is a sufficient inducement for most.

I would agree that it's a bit gotcha ... but I'd also say that order of ops is important enough that we could all use an occasional reminder, especially if we're teaching math.

Another common wrong answer not included in the poll results from a misunderstanding of PEMDAS (thinking that addition comes before subtraction) so people are adding all the 1s and thinking it becomes 9-7. (Another pitfall to make sure your kids know about) :P

They've also got earth science listed for high school level. No clue why they have done physical science instead of physics, unless it's because they (holt mcdougal/saxon homeschool) are also selling Saxon Physics.

That minus sign is a sneaky fellow. (There have been many problems like this on facebook lately for some reason.)

If he has the college credits and the transcript, it'll look plenty legit. I'd definitely list it by year and include the stuff done prior to 9th grade in a separate column. i.e. if his 9th grade course is calculus, include algebra 1/2/geometry/trigonometry in "completed before 9th grade." so that the box-tickers can see that the course was completed.

Dual credit doesn't just mean take freshman classes; why would it? He can be taking the same courses you already had planned for him to take, testing out of the courses you had planned for him to test out of, and still be technically 'in high school' for attendance purposes. Furthermore, what 8fill laid out about which schools is something you need to seriously consider with a top student. Many schools are pretty snobby about where the bachelor's degree was received; your chances of receiving transfer credit may be higher than your chances of admission with a degree from a lower university. At least with the transfer credit denial, he can petition to take exams for advanced standing if not credit.

I meant to start dual credit when he's "finished" with your high school. I think the others did too.