Factor This!

The first step towards working on my MBA is taking this mysterious test know as the GMAT. Let me just express my surprise that it has math questions! I spent a couple hours last night re-learning 4 years of grammar school pre-Algebra. Now if that sounds silly to you, get out a sheet of paper and divide 789.25 by 12.3, no calculators. Do it the old fashioned way, I'll wait.  La la la, dum dum dum. Can't remember how? Don't feel bad, neither did I. We learned this in the sixth grade so it's obviously a basic math skill but after sixteen years of programming computers and using a calculator I can't remember how to do it. Long division wasn't the only mathematical skill my brain had jettisoned while I wasn't looking. Prime numbers, see ya! Factors, buh-bye! Fractions, gone! I can barely figure out enough fractions to use the little tick marks on tape measure. I mean honestly, its 2006,  can't we just use a laser to measure stuff? Shouldn't a robot be handling this?

I even had some of the exact same thoughts I had back in grammar school. To divide fractions, you invert and multiply. Who the hell thought of that? A negative times a negative equals a positive. What? Where's my calculator, I need to verify this. It also got me to thinking that in a lot of ways, we leave grammar school a lot more self sufficient than we leave college. In the eighth grade we could recite out multiplication tables like soldiers in out sleep, "9 * 9 = 81, this is my rifle, this is my gun." Now I occasionally have to stop and think. Quick, what's 9 * 8?  It's 72, I verified it with a calculator.

Oh, I can hardly wait for the writing and verbal skills sections.