It’s shameful that people in positions of responsibility can’t or won’t answer simple arithmetic questions.
As this article suggests, one’s times tables are considered optional by England’s ruling class.
The diagram is interesting though. Why are certain multiplications more difficult than others? Why are there asymmetries? Does this reflect something about the sound patterns or about our underlying brain structure?
Patrick Andrews has a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Heriot-Watt University and an MSc in Neuroscience from the University of Cambridge.
A former Chartered Engineer and Chartered Mathematician, Patrick has worked in management consultancies and high-tech startups, and in academia as a postdoc in Applied Mathematics at Cambridge and a maths lecturer at De Montfort University.
Patrick is the father of three delightful (but not uniformly mathematical!) daughters.