There are two forms of setting out questions involving the reduction of shillings to £'s. They are:

In example (i), after crossing off the nought of the 20 and the last figure of the dividend, division is by 2 ; whilst in example (ii) division is by 20. Consequently, in (ii), the first figure of the quotient is one place further to the right than it is in (i). The divisor, 20, is often omitted in both examples.

Mr. A. Blackwell’s doubts, published in the February Gazette, make sad reading for one who has spent his life teaching mathematics.

Mr. Blackwell and similar pessimists attack the basis of our ordinary curriculum, but he differs from some gloomy writers by including certain constructive suggestions which need consideration.

1. Heaviside’s operational method has for some time been in fairly general use among engineers for solving problems in circuit theory, and appears in most of their textbooks. The average man who has read these seems able to manipulate the “expansion theorem” and to solve problems in which E.M.F is applied to an initially “dead” circuit, but he is not at all clear about the foundations or correctness of the theory and apt to be worried by any slightly more complicated problem, such as cases in which the circuit is not initially dead or problems involving switching operations (which are usually dealt with in the textbooks by artifice). It is now pretty well recognised that the Laplace transformation provides a satisfactory approach to the operational methods, but it is not perhaps fully realised just how simple it is and how extremely easy to teach.

There is a healthy attempt to break down the barriers that have hitherto existed between the subjects that are taught in schools. At the same time it must, I think, be taken as an axiom that the several major subjects of the curriculum, especially in secondary schools, should be organised without reference to each other if each is to make use of its own distinctive discipline. A complicated articulation would be unworkable.