Increasing Options, Reducing Errors

Alternative Algorithms:

n algorithm is a finite, step-by-step procedure for accomplishing a task that we wish to complete (Usiskin 1998, p. 7). Algorithms have served as a major focus of mathematics education in the United States for decades. Because school-based mathematics focuses on compu-

tation and estimation, the tasks of developing number sense, place-value understanding, and strategies for computing with algorithms remain of great importance to elementary school teachers. The use of algorithms allows students to look at math as a process rather than as a question answer type activity . . . they can choose from their toolbox. Algorithms provide a comfort zone for some students and encourage students to pursue better ways as they get comfortable with them (Mingus and Grassl 1998, p. 56).

Some students have trouble completing wholenumber algorithms, whereas others may search for interesting alternatives to traditional computation methods. The options described here present opportunities for critical thinking, for a wide variety of mathematical experiences, and for increased communication and an atmosphere Tamela D. Randolph of high expectations. Alternatives to the cusand Helene J. Sherman tomary algorithms, commonly encountered in textbooks and resource materials, are not unique but facilitate students conceptual and skill development at their own levels of understanding

and decision making. Students skilled in using a variety of computational techniques have at their command the power and efficiency of mathematics (Sheffield and Cruikshank 2000, p. 154).

Addition Algorithms
The right-to-left partial-sums algorithm (see fig. 1a) was developed in India more than 1000 years ago (Bassarear 1997). Each sum is recorded separately in the correct place. Beginning in the ones column, the 6 ones and 9 ones represent 15 ones, or 1 ten and 5 ones. The 1 is recorded in the tens place, and the 5 is recorded in the ones place. Because the 9 and 7 represent 9 tens and 7 tens, that sum is recorded as 1 hundred and 6 tens. The 4 and 8, representing 4 hundreds and 8 hundreds, add to 12 hundreds; the 1 is recorded in the thousands place and the 2, in the hundreds place. The advantage of this method, for students who have difficulty with the traditional algorithm, is that
TEACHING CHILDREN MATHEMATICS

Tamela Randolph, trandolph@semovm.semo.edu, teaches mathematics content and methods courses for preservice elementary school teachers at Southeast Missouri State University, Cape Girardeau, MO 63701. Her research interests include math anxiety and the use of technology in the classroom. Helene Sherman, eedhsher@jinx.umsl.edu, teaches undergraduate and graduate mathematics education courses at the University of MissouriSaint Louis, Saint Louis, MO 63121. She works with professional development and grant programs for instructional and assessment strategies aimed at students in grades K8.

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Copyright 2001 The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Inc. www.nctm.org. All rights reserved. This material may not be copied or distributed electronically or in any other format without written permission from NCTM.

Partial-sum algorithms 496 +879 15 160 1200 1375 (a) Right to left 496 +879 1200 160 15 1375 (b) Left to right 496 +879 12 16 15 1375 (c) Left to right

Scratch method (low stress)

1 2 2

4 7 6 84 76 95 + 3 8 6 1 7 4 1

mental regrouping is not required; all the partial sums are recorded separately before being combined. Other students find this method enjoyable because with it they can see where each of the numbers in the traditional procedure originates. Also, the method yields a correct sum whether the partial sums begin with the ones or the left-most column. Left-to-right addition (see figs. 1b and 1c) was often used to check the result of right-to-left addition before 1900 (Pearson 1986). These methods are based on partial sums and correct place-value alignment. To use these algorithms, one begins on the left side and combines the 4 and 8, which represent 4 hundreds and 8 hundreds. A sum of 12 hundreds, or 1200, is recorded in the correct places, representing 1 thousand and 2 hundreds, with or without recording the 0 place holders. The 9 tens and 7 tens are recorded as 16 tens, or 160, on the next line down in the correct place. Combining the 6 ones and the 9 ones results in 15 ones, which are recorded on the third line. The places from left to right are added to obtain the sum. Using graph paper aids students in recording digits in the correct places. The advantages of the partial-sum method include the opportunity to add from left to right for those students who have difficulty with right-toleft orientation. Because primary-grade students are taught to read from left to right, they in particular may have difficulty in working algorithms from right to left. Also, the option of beginning the algorithm with the largest place value is appealing to students; this method reflects students tendency to group larger numbers first, just as they group larger base-ten blocks before beginning to work with the unit cubes. The scratch method (see fig. 2) is also effective for students who have trouble with the traditional
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algorithm. In this method, the student performs a series of single-digit additions instead of mentally carrying a sum through multiple additions. To find the sum 476 + 879 + 386, for example, the ones are added from top to bottom. The first two numbers in the ones column, 9 and 6, are combined, and because that sum of 15 is 10 or more, a scratch or mark, representing the tens place, is made through the second addend. The ones digit (5) of the sum is recorded beside the second addend (9), then added to the next addend (6), and recorded as a partial sum again, making a scratch through the next addend if necessary. Adding and scratching are continued until the units column is complete. The units digit of the last sum is recorded as the units digit of the answer. Then the number of scratches in the units column is recorded above the tens column, and the adding continues, repeating the scratching process. The entire process is continued until all the columns have been added. As figure 3 and written student comments show, students mentally process the partial sums throughout the problem. Students saw an advantage in recording the partial sums, which does not require them to carry numbers mentally. Also, this algorithm appeals to students desire to work quickly because, as the examples show, they do not have to record all the complete partial sums.

FIGURE 2

FIGURE 1

FIGURE 3

Mentally processing the sum

Subtraction Algorithms
The equal-additions method of subtraction (see fig. 4) is based on compensation, which can be investigated with this algorithm. Compensation in subtraction is the idea that adding like numbers to addends and subtrahends results in the same difference. When students relate the fact that 9 5 = (9 + 1) (5 + 1) = 10 6, they are working with compensation. In figure 4, instead of a ten being taken from the 6 tens, as would be done in the traditional algorithm, a ten is added to the 5 ones to give 15 ones. To compensate, 1 ten is added to the subtrahend, resulting in 8 tens. The 9 ones are then subtracted from the 15 ones. The next step is to add 10 tens to the 6 tens in the minuend so that 8 tens can be subtracted. To compensate, 1 hundred is added to the
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Equal-additions algorithm

5 4 65 9 8 1 8 79 3 5 86
2

14 16 15

Low-stress algorithm

5 4 4 13 8 4 5

6 15 7 8

5 (original minuend) 15 (renamed minuend) 9 (subtrahend) 6

Employing critical thinking

Subtraction by adding the complement

5465 879

5465 + 120 45585 + 1 4586

8 hundreds, yielding 9 hundreds. The amount of 8 tens is then subtracted from 16 tens. Next, 10 hundreds added to the 4 hundreds results in 14 hundreds; to compensate, 1 thousand is added to the subtrahend. Then 9 hundreds can be subtracted from 14 hundreds, and 2 thousand is subtracted from 5 thousand. The main advantage of this procedure is that it does not rely on ones skill in regrouping but on a knowledge of individual addition and subtraction facts. Equal additions is an interesting optional method for relating subtraction to addition. Low-stress subtraction involves renaming the minuend and writing it between the original minuend and the subtrahend before subtracting individual digits (Hutchings 1975). In figure 5, 6 tens are renamed as 5 tens and 10 ones; the 10 ones are
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regrouped with the 5 ones to make 15 ones. Next, because 7 tens cannot be subtracted from 5 tens, 4 hundreds is renamed as 3 hundreds and 10 tens; the 10 tens are regrouped with the 5 tens to make 15 tens. This process continues until the minuend is rewritten so that no impasses to subtraction remain and the problem is ready to be completed. Students can organize their work before beginning to subtract. The subtraction is then completed in the traditional manner using the renamed minuend and subtrahend. This method can also be easily modeled with place-value blocks. The focus here is on organization and efficiencyall regrouping is performed together. Students should try to resolve all the impasses, that is, places where the subtrahend digit is larger than the minuend digit, before subtracting. They learn to look ahead in a problem, before getting bogged down in the details, to see what difficulties might exist. Students should also be given some problems in which regrouping is not required in some of the steps. Critical thinking is evident in figure 6, in which the student writes about having to reason through the regrouping process before completing the problem. Subtraction by adding the complement (see fig. 7) is a unique way to use complementary numbers, defined here as two numbers with a sum that is a number whose digits are all nines, for this example, 999. This method is useful for students who prefer adding two numbers to subtracting two numbers. In figure 7, instead of subtracting 879 from 5465, we add the complement of 879 (999 879 = 120) to 5465. The leading digit of the answer is crossed out and reduced by 1, and 1 is added to the answer. This procedure produces the same difference as the original problem, since you have mathematically added the same number to both the minuend and the subtrahend. The algorithm can be explained as follows: 5465 879 = 5465 + 120 (the complement of 879) 1000 (subtracting the leading digit) + 1 = 5465 1000 + 121 = 5465 879. This method provides practice in finding complementary numbers.

FIGURE 7

FIGURE 6

FIGURE 5

FIGURE 4

Multiplication Algorithms
Based on multiplying one place at a time, the partial-products algorithm (see fig. 8) is completed in the same manner as the expanded-notation algorithm (75 28 = 70 20 + 70 8 + 5 20 + 5 8) but is written vertically rather than horizontally. This algorithm can begin in either the left or right column. When beginning on the left in the tens place, 7 tens is multiplied by 2 tens to get 1400; 7 tens is then multiplied by 8 ones, resulting in 560 ones. That product is recorded on the next line. Moving to the ones column, 5 ones multiplied by 2
TEACHING CHILDREN MATHEMATICS

tens is 100 ones, which is written on the third line. The product of 5 ones times 8 ones, or 40 ones, is written on the fourth line. The partial products are added, and the product is found. The partial-products method does not require simultaneous regrouping of addition with multiplication. Teachers can easily assess multiplication facts that students consistently miss by examining partial products before they are renamed and added. Figure 9 shows the work of one student who was successful in finding the product without being required to regroup, which would have been necessary in the traditional algorithm. In the prose, the student comments about the ease with which she arrived at the answer. When using the lattice method of multiplication, 28 75 is written as shown in figure 10. Using a grid for multiplication was a popular method in the tenth century in India and in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in Europe (Carroll and Porter 1998). Each partial product is recorded without reference to total place value as each factor down the right side is multiplied by each factor across the top of the lattice. The product is placed in a cell by writing the tens digit at the top of the diagonal line and the ones digit at the bottom of the diagonal. After this process is completed, the numbers in each diagonal row are added, beginning in the lower-right diagonal column. The tens digit is regrouped to the next diagonal row. The product is read by beginning in the upper-left corner. The lattice method helps teachers identify multiplication facts for which students consistently find incorrect products. By isolating the basic facts from the next step of adding partial products, which is not done in the traditional algorithm, diagnosis and prescriptive teaching is possible. Moreover, many students enjoy this method of multiplication because it is fairly simplistic and quite novel in its design. The duplation procedure (see fig. 11) was used by the Egyptians, who developed an algorithm for multiplying using repeated addition and doubling (Bassarear 1997). This method worked quite well for a number system that lacked the concept of place value. To find the product of 28 and 75, choose one of the two factors to begin doubling. In this example, 75 was selected. Record the product of that factor (75) and 1, of 75 and 2, of 75 and 4, and of 75 and 8, thus doubling the previous multiple in each subsequent step. The process is stopped at the step of multiplying 75 by 16 because, if continued, one records 32 times 75. However, 32 exceeds the other original factor, 28. In general, the doubling is stopped before the doubling column exceeds the second factor in the problem, in this example, 28. The digits in the first column with a sum equal to 28 are then circled. The sum of 16, 8, and 4 is 28. So the sum of the products that correspond to the mulAPRIL 2001

FIGURE 8

Multiplying by partial products beginning on the left (a) or right (b)

75 28 1400 560 100 40 2100 (a)

75 28 40 560 100 1400 2100 (b)

FIGURE 9 FIGURE 10

Finding the product without being required to regroup

Multiplication using the lattice method

2 2 1 1 4 1 0 0

8 5 6 4 0 0 7 5

tiplication of 4, 8, and 16 is found. In this example, the sum is 2100, which is the product of 28 and 75. Duplation is quite different from the usual algorithms. This alternative method allows students to work with addition and multiplication in a way that is not totally dependent on fact memorization or the alignment of multiplicative partial products.

Division
The scaffolding algorithm allows students to use partial quotients that are familiar to them. These partial quotients are subsequently subtracted from the dividend until the dividend is smaller than the divisor. An advantage of this type of division problem is that all students may not choose the same multiples of the divisor to subtract from the partial quotient, as shown in figure 12. Scaffolding
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enables students to use their reasoning and estimation skills, as well as their number sense, to suggest partial quotients, then to check and revise in small steps. Multiplying by multiples of 10 is practical because it helps students learn to suggest partial quotients that are subtracted efficiently in each step. The scaffolding method can be recorded in another form, called the pyramid, or stacking, method (see fig. 13). If each partial quotient is written in the correct place-value position and recorded one above the other, the partial quotients can be added vertically. Then the sum becomes the total quotient, and its digits fall in the correct placevalue positions. This method is helpful in guiding students who might have difficulty in transferring the sum from the scaffolding algorithm or the traditional method to the correct place-value position for a final quotient.

FIGURE 11

Multiplication using the duplation method 28 1 2 4 8 16 75 75 75 75 75 75 = = = = = = ?? 75 150 300 600 1200

FIGURE 12

Scaffolding for division

Conclusion
Students individual needs and styles are the focus of lessons on alternative algorithms. Using these options, students develop their own understanding of, and skills in, arithmetic operations, enhancing their decision-making and critical-thinking skills. Some teachers may be apprehensive about using these alternative techniques because other teachers and parents may be unfamiliar with them and unwilling to accept them; however, evidence from students work shows that alternative algorithms offer a vehicle for deeper understanding of mathematics. Researchers believe that the development of algorithmic thinking provides the foundation for students mathematical power (Peressini and Knuth 1998, p. 56). Enjoyment and feelings of success are further benefits of engaging students beyond traditional instruction.

32 5897 3200 2697 1600 1097 960 137 128 9

100 50 30 4 184

FIGURE 13

The pyramid method to record results from the scaffolding algorithm

184 4 30 50 100 32 5897 3200 2697 1600 1097 960 137 128 9

References
Bassarear, Tom. Mathematics for Elementary School Teachers. Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1997. Carroll, William M., and Denise Porter. Alternative Algorithms for Whole-Number Operations. In The Teaching and Learning of Algorithms in School Mathematics, 1998 Yearbook of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), edited by Lorna J. Morrow and Margaret J. Kenney, pp. 10614. Reston, Va.: NCTM, 1998. Hutchings, Barton. Low Stress Algorithms. In Measurement in School Mathematics, 1976 Yearbook of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), edited by Doyal Nelson and Robert Reys, pp. 21839. Reston, Va.: NCTM, 1976. Mingus, Tabitha T. Y., and Richard M. Grassl. Algorithmic and Recursive Thinking: Current Beliefs and Their Implications for the Future. In The Teaching and Learning of Algorithms in School Mathematics, 1998 Yearbook of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), edited by

Lorna J. Morrow and Margaret J. Kenney. Reston, Va.: NCTM, 1998. Pearson, Eleanor S. Summing It All Up: Pre-1900 Algorithms. Arithmetic Teacher 33 (March 1986): 3841. Peressini, Dominic, and Eric Knuth. The Importance of Algorithms in Performance-Based Assessments. In The Teaching and Learning of Algorithms in School Mathematics, 1998 Yearbook of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), edited by Lorna J. Morrow and Margaret J. Kenney. Reston, Va.: NCTM, 1998. Sheffield, Linda, and Douglas Cruikshank. Teaching and Learning Elementary and Middle School Mathematics. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2000. Usiskin, Zalman. Paper-and-Pencil Algorithms in a Calculatorand-Computer Age. In The Teaching and Learning of Algorithms in School Mathematics, 1998 Yearbook of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), edited by Lorna J. Morrow and Margaret J. Kenney, pp. 720. Reston, Va.: NCTM, 1998. v TEACHING CHILDREN MATHEMATICS

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