After Zhao Xiaoyu finished her stroll, she brought a plate of fruit to Xiao Lei and saw that he was frowning deeply.
"It's difficult? What's there to not understand?"
“I can actually understand the Four Books and Five Classics, but learning math is really hard.
It wasn't just me who was having a hard time. The teacher said he had a headache too. Every time he talked about arithmetic in class, everyone would sigh. I was the worst student and couldn't understand anything the teacher was saying.
Xiao Lei sighed. It was not like he had not learned arithmetic before, and he thought he was pretty good at it. Why was it so difficult now?
Even though the teacher explained it to him privately, to be honest, he was still confused.
I'm bad at math. Math is really hard to learn.
"Let me see."
Zhao Xiaoyu leaned over and looked at the math problem booklet Xiao Lei had spread out on his desk. It was filled with word problems involving fields, grain taxes, and computer calculations.
"Look at this one," Xiao Lei pointed at a question, his brow furrowed. "There's a field fifteen steps wide and sixteen steps deep. How many steps is the field? What do these two terms mean? And how do you calculate them?"
Zhao Xiaoyu was delighted when she saw it. Isn't this just a simple calculation of the area of a rectangle? 广 is width, 從 is length.
"This is easy," she picked up the brush beside her and drew a rectangle on the paper, marking it "15 steps wide" and "16 steps from the center."
"Look, 广 means width, and 從 means length. To ask how big this field is, you're asking for its area. How do you calculate the area? Simply multiply the length and width."
Write down: 15 × 16 = 240.
"So, the area of this field is 240 square steps." Zhao Xiaoyu explained.
Xiao Lei's eyes widened as he watched Zhao Xiaoyu solve the problem that had been bothering him for so long with just a few strokes of the pen, and his tone was so relaxed! "It's...it's really like this? So simple?"
"Yes, it's that simple." Zhao Xiaoyu pointed to the next question, "'There is a circular field with a circumference of thirty steps and a diameter of ten steps. What is the geometry of the field?' This is about finding the area of a circle. Well... even though the circumference and diameter are given, to find the area directly, we should use... the square of the radius multiplied by pi."
She paused, remembering that in ancient times, pi was roughly 3, or a rough approximation of "circumference times circumference." "The diameter here is ten paces, so the radius is five paces. The area is roughly... five times five times three." She wrote on the paper: 5 × 5 × 3 = 75. "About seventy-five square paces."
Xiao Lei was completely stunned, looking at Zhao Xiaoyu with eyes full of disbelief.
"Xiaoyu...you...when did you learn all this?" He had never heard of her learning these things, and being so proficient in them!
"I'm quite interested in arithmetic and have taught myself a little bit. You know I bought a lot of books and I've learned a lot by reading them regularly."
Xiao Lei felt a little ashamed. His wife would not go to school, but he had a teacher to teach her, and he was still confused.
"Madam is so talented!"
Hehe...
Zhao Xiaoyu continued to look at the questions. Oh, there are chicken and rabbit cages. These are all elementary school questions, right?
Even if she is not good at math, there is no way she can't do it!
"There are pheasants and rabbits in a cage. There are thirty-five pheasants and rabbits on top and ninety-four legs below. How many pheasants and rabbits are there?" Zhao Xiaoyu read out the question, her lips curling up. This is the classic chicken-and-rabbit-in-a-cage problem.
Xiao Lei looked distressed. "That's exactly the question. The teacher used some 'leg-lifting method' and 'hypothesis method' when explaining it. I'm completely bewildered, but I still can't get the point."
"This isn't difficult. We have a simpler way to connect it." Zhao Xiaoyu picked up a pen. "We can design..."
"Look, there are 12 rabbits. So there are 35 - 12 = 23 chickens." Zhao Xiaoyu put down her pen. "Let's do the math: 23 chickens, 46 legs; 12 rabbits, 48 legs. That adds up to exactly 94 legs, right?"
Xiao Lei stared at the calculation process on the paper in amazement. Although he didn't quite understand the symbols, the logic was clear, the steps were correct, and the results were accurate! This was clearer than any method he had heard before!
"This...this method..." He was so excited that he was a little incoherent. "Xiaoyu, where did you learn this method? It's so wonderful! It's much easier to understand than what the teacher taught!"
Zhao Xiaoyu said to herself, "Oh no!" She almost got exposed again.
She quickly mumbled, "I saw it in a miscellaneous book and thought it was interesting, so I wrote it down."
"Do you still not understand? Let me explain it to you again."
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