To make this even more impressive, realize that Tom is playing the piano accompaniment throughout this performance.

I was introduced to Tom Lehrer around 1954 by my uncle, who'd lived in America, and brought back the LP. I was hooked, even that young - I was 10. I'm now 70 - something and still love him. This is a VERY clever video! Congratulations!

I played this for my father once back in the Seventies, and he cracked up when Lehrer got to the line "if you're under 35 or went to a private school you say 7 from 3 is 6, but if you're over 35 and went to a public school you say 8 from 4 is 6." My dad was over 35 then but had gone to Catholic school whereas my mom had gone to public school, so apparently he knew EXACTLY what Lehrer was talking about there! 8-)

Fun fact: I actually understand what numbers in Bases other than Base 10 thanks to this song.

Well done!! I'm old enough to remember this, and have the 12 inch vinyl record!

Started watching the TED Talk Periodic Elements videos and that led me to Tom Lehrer and that led me to New Math. Ah....those/these are the days. Thanks.

7 titles at the Tour de France

*Only if the fraction part existed....*

Awesome video! I remember listening to this as a kid and just having my head spin. thank you for making me laugh like a kid! Well done video. thank you!

This is one of the best video I've ever seen. Our maths teacher showed us this video. Its soo good. Great job!!!!

I actually bought this LP in 1965 when it came out. Laughed my ass off just watching your video. Excellent performance. Tom would be proud.

This is mu favorite video of this song. I am sorry you stopped making videos. This is brilliant!

"Base 8 is like base 10…if you're missing two fingers." We used to play this record before school every day in my 4th-grade class.

You can't take three from two, Two is less than three, So you look at the four in the tens place.Now that's really four tens So you make it three tens, Regroup, and you change a ten to ten ones, And you add 'em to the two and get twelve, And you take away three, that's nine. Now instead of four in the tens place You've got three, 'Cause you added one, That is to say, ten, to the two, But you can't take seven from three, So you look in the hundreds place. From the three you then use one To make ten ones... (And you know why four plus minus one Plus ten is fourteen minus one? 'Cause addition is commutative, right!) And so you've got thirteen tens And you take away seven, And that leaves five... Well, six actually... You can't take three from two,Two is less than three, So you look at the four in the eights place. Now that's really four eights, So you make it three eights, Regroup, and you change an eight to eight ones And you add 'em to the two, And you get one-two base eight, Which is ten base ten, And you take away three, that's seven. Now instead of four in the eights place You've got three,'Cause you added one, That is to say, eight, to the two, But you can't take seven from three, So you look at the sixty-fours... From the three, you then use one To make eight ones, You add those ones to the three, And you get one-three base eight, Or, in other words, In base ten you have eleven, And you take away seven, And seven from eleven is four! Now go back to the sixty-fours,You're left with two, And you take away one from two, One, that's right.

I grew up listening to Tom Lehrer! This is great!

Reminds me of a recent argument I had with my daughters math teacher after I read her math book! Quite a discussion since I am old school engineer. Great video BTW!

Am I the only one here who thinks that he looks like the Engineer from the TF-2?

Dude, way wicked. My kids love it. Keep up the craziness. We need more mathematicians to be wacky and have fun!

Well done. Tom Lehrer would be proud. :-)

Our analysis professor showed us this in the very first lecture in 2012... It left a mark

Greetings. This song is fantastic, and I think it was made in 1965. You did a great job memorizing it and performing it. Some of the facial expressions were priceless.

I always had trouble doing subtraction--and even addition--the way we learned it in grade school, in the Fifties. Then I got a book titled _Mental Magnetism Course_ by Harry Lorayne in 1969. I learned new techniques for arithmetic altogether! I still know the basic arithmetic addition and multiplication tables I learned as a kid. But Lorayne's techniques for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division are so easy; and calculators help--though, believe it or not, there is some arithmetic I can do that works out better than my vaunted multigigabyte desktop computer can do it!!

This video has inspired me and I am currently trying to figure out a way to make a song that contains similar stylistic elements to explain the proof converting ax^2+bx+c=0 to x=[-b-+(b^2-4ac)^(1/2)]/2a. Wish me luck on that. Meanwhile, this easily one of my favorite videos on KZfaq. I'm not easily swayed to bestow such honors because I know that they never mean much, but in my mind this has the makings of a classic. I hope to show all my friends in Calculus this video.

Love Tom Lehrer. Nice job. Very entertaining.

The purpose for having students "think" about math is so that they understand how and why the efficient algorithms work. The purpose for "learning math" in the first place is to become a human calculator. The two extremes to avoid are (1) the blind learning of algorithms and (2) the eschewing of the most efficient algorithms. The purpose of "reforming" math lessons should be to make the proofs for the algorithms as lucid, concrete, and intuitive as possible. This is what I try to do.

This makes me feel so old

Old math confused me so much that I tried to figure it out. A half hour later, I think I can do it.

4 years ago my math teacher showed this to our class!

Great expressions and spot-on lipsynching!

I love this video. :) Always makes me smile.

omg this video brings back so many memories XD

I did not grow up with this, but I appreciate the humor.

My math teacher showed me this

I'm going to show this to my math teacher

The idea is that nobody in the audience grew up with it, unlike you. Leherer capitalizes on this and comedy is produced as a result. As an example, I was taught math the "normal way", and as a result I am able to appreciate this for its comedy value.

Bloody hilarious and ..... awesome!!!!

Excellent video!

As someone who was raised in the years between "old math" and "new math" I totally understand what he's getting at. Online math courses are just as bad. Even my math teachers don't understand the question sometimes!

love it

I adore your voice. When I heard the "Masochism Tango" I about died.

Love this

I remember learning this in school back in first grade and it SUCKED. But looking back on it now, I'm pretty sure this video would've helped me a lot more than anything my teacher said :P

Easily one of my favorites. LIsten to the whole thing.

haha my teacher made us watch this today in maths class! we all laughed. nice job matey!

@TheShadowsLotus Another way to think about it in base8. There's the 1's place which goes up to 8, before rolling over. so the number 10 would represent 1. 8 or 8. 20 would represent the number 16 or 2 '8.s The 3rd slot would only roll over once it has 8 "(8s) so 100 would be 64. that would only roll over once you have 8 of those. So each place is essentially multiplying by 8 to move one over. Just like in base 10 you multiply by 10.

The way we count normally is also called Base 10, because that counting system has 10 digits, 0-9. Base 8 is similar, except the digits are 0-7, so instead of writing 8, you bump up the "10s" place (or the 8's place, in this case?) So 8 would actually be written as 10 in base 8. It seems weird at first, but most people are also used to Base 12 without even realizing it. It's what we use to tell time.

I never recovered from New Math. When Common Core was introduced, all I could think was: "they never learn".

For all my friends who had trouble with the OLD math.

@TheKhive I am sorry, I am not sure I understand there :P What part would you like me to do again?

I learned new math and am just beginning CC Math with my kid. Paul Simon was right "When I think back on all the c**p I learned in High School, it's a wonder I can think at all..."

I found myself reading your comment to the song's rhythm even though it was over... Anyway, that's normal for "new people", I even think the "new math" should be even "newer". But this is coming from someone who'd happily study maths at university if he could, so...

@VinuVonVin My point was that in our numbering system a base 8 system is not intuitive. It isn't because we are just used to base 10, it is because the way we talk about numbers is inherently rooted in the idea of 10. We have 10 unique digits that repeat every 10 numbers, then every 100 numbers, then every 1000 numbers etc. The only way a base 8 numbering system would be as intuitive as base 10 is if the numbers 9 and 0 did not exist and there was a switch every 8 numbers.I say we stick with10

@cras17 most of the low level computing languages do arithmetic in base two (binary), base eight (octal), and base sixteen (hexadecimal)... if you were going to do some coding in ForTran back in the 70's for example, you'd need to know your octal. Octal is a useful way to express 8-bit values. Anyway, you can do whatever base you want. You simply select your digits and columns on that base. So base 5 has 5 digits (0,1,2,3,4) and columns in powers of 5 (1's, 5's, 25's, 125's) etc.

@Monosmith: This video has inspired me and I am currently trying to figure out a way to make a song that contains similar stylistic elements to explain the proof converting ax^2+bx+c=0 to x=[-b-+(b^2-4ac)^(1/2)]/2a. Wish me luck on that. Too late, Tom Lehrer already did a "Quadratic Song." ;) I think it's here: Tom Lehrer - Maths lecture (1997)

Love it

A bit is a bit. I intended to show that we were using a 1,000 octal bit - that is, a physical matrix of ferrite cores that could be polarized in 2 different ways that was constructed to respond to octal arithmetic internally - memory. This was a cubic structure about 5 inches on a side, weighing about 2 pounds, made mostly of iron! We numbered each bit within the core with its octal address. Enough said.

Brilliant

Still love and appreciate TL’s weird sense of the absurd.

I guess this new math is now old math because this is how I learned to do subtraction in the late 60s. Just looked it up and this song was from 1965 so this makes sense. I wonder what NEW new math method my kids were taught in the aughts. I need to ask them.

I learned both ways. Or rather....my teachers attempted to teach me using every method they could think of. Nothing stuck until I hit algebra - and then math made sense! I probably laugh a bit too hard at this song.

Now do it again in base 16!

@PersephonesFear Although I've never been particularly fast at math (largely due to inefficiencies in my thought processes) I was good at it and ran into the same issue. Our version of the "new math" also had us showing 2 different ways of looking at a word problem. I would figure it out and then have fun deciding which way I would illustrate it this time. I do, however, think that more formula work early on would have helped me, as it would have removed some of my aforementioned inefficiencies.

This explanation of subtraction makes perfect sense if you use an abacus to illustrate--every bead on a given wire equals ten beads on the wire to its right, if working in a base 10 system. If you un out of beads on a wire, just get rid of a bead on the wire to the left, then give yourself 10 more beads on the original wire. Easy as changing a $10 poker chip for 10 $1 poker chips, and the same principle. Of course, one can also make abacai to represent other bases, just by using different numbers of beads on the wires. (One could, theoretically, even make one that'd be able to calculate galleons, sickles, and knuts.) Point is, the new math isn't so complicated, once it can be visualized.

@Menarkh Oh! So 'new math' is just writing out the steps rather then doing it in your head and writing it down. That makes sence, thanks!

@abebou 12 is interesting in that we actually have natural English words for powers of 12 (up to 12^2 at least) which we don't have for the other bases (except 10 of course). Consider "eight gross eleven dozen and ten". Using "A" for ten and "B" for eleven this is 8BA (base 12) = 1294 (base 10).

Yeah, its just that I had come to think that new math was something we tried for a while before giving up on and discarding entirely. It never occurred to me that some of the concepts might have stuck around and gotten into canon math teaching. That is why I was confused.

@lipsynchorswim The answers are different in Base 10 and in Base 8, because the starting numbers represent values that are fundamentally different. You can indeed verify that 147 (8) = 103 (10).

@skvakagud Imperial - A hillbilly measuring system. Couldn't have put it better myself.

So funny...this guy reminds me so much of a young Arlo Guthrie!

I actually had to use Base 8 when studying early computer structures and programming. In fact, we manually input data in the ferrite core of our Univac Digital Trainer, which had 1,000 octal bits, or 512 decimal bits, of RAM that we had to address individually to input to the various registers. Our output device was a teletype writer, and we input the data by pushing binary coded decimal groups of lighted switches to change the states of the octal bits. Not user friendly...

I like this version. It displays how both the person who made the video and Tom Lehrer think that they're being funny, but they're both insanely stupid.

@JH9234 sure, it could work, and it does work in a lot of cases. Problem (at least here in the Netherlands) is that if a kid does not understand it, you lose both things: the pupil cannot add, and doesn't understand. If you go with the old method, and after that teach the theory behind it, the chance that a pupil can at least perform the arithmetic is much better. Of course, I do agree that a good method should also teach understanding.

@Ziiiv Personally I think trying to teach rigid exact mathematical concepts using the vague English language makes things far more difficult. It's much easier to understand math when you have an exact algorithm to study which conveys things much better than trying to figure out what someone means when they talk about abstract concepts I can't relate to and explicitly avoid using metaphor.

This really needs to be animated in School House Rock style. And for those of you wondering why on earth do this like this, it's necessary for PLC (Programmable Control Logic) programming, but I don't recommend trying it on a 2nd graders first. Save it for 5th grade!

I've never heard of Tom Lehrer prior to this video so for the last couple of videos, I thought you were him...until I saw your username, haha! Geez, I have to say, you're very good at lipsynching! Your attire and body language fits Tom's singing voice to a T :D!

im courious to know what you did with the 2 and 3, it seems way easier then the "new math trick". if someone could explain to me how the method works it would be greatly appreciated

I hate how they are saying you need to know what you are doing. No, you just need to know if what you are doing will get you the right answer. It's math, all that matters is the answer. All you really need to know is what formula, if you will, to use in any situation.

To skip to base 8; go to 2:47

Use plus as concatenation of strings, with caution. I've worked with numerous platforms where that operator isn't set up to work that way. It is immensely frustrating to need to search the help text for what syntax I need to use instead, for concatenation.

I like base 12. Which is what our measurement of time is based on, btw.

And this was (more or less) a joke song when written. but now we have Common Core where (as Tom Jokingly said) the important thing is to know what you're doing rather than to get the right answer. I weep for the future.

@cras17 The point is not to work in Base 8, it's to work in an arbitrary base. Base 8 is just an easy base to work with.

@ChaoMystero it is and was confusing. I maintain that this is why I still do math on my fingers (50+ years later). The way he presents it here is exactly the way it was presented in the classroom. :)

This is brilliant lip-syncing. Great job! Also, great song!

@cras17 While my schools could not understand 'why' I was so far ahead of my peers in multiplication, division, math, etc (because I did math drills, could 'guess and check' fast, elimintate wrong answers quickly, memorize formulas, etc) - they thought it horrible that I never showed my work. The schools loved 'mental math' - making us spend 4 pages showing 'two different ways, with graphs' showing how we arrived to the conclusion of a given word problem. (It didn't matter if we got it right.)

@skvakagud I live in Canada. I use the metric system. I think it is the greatest thing to happen to measurement ever. All SI units should become standard everywhere and always. Imperial influence does bleed in from the US but support for metric is growing there slowly. They just need to suck it up, get off the fence and make a full conversion.

This is great. It’s visual. Definitely will show to my kid who is just about old enough to comprehend base 8. I wonder if Professor Leherer knew how important base 8 calculations would become…. When I see 12 I still think C.

I don't have enough fingers and toes to count on.....

@paulrank: Last time I checked, a bit is a bit, there is no such thing as a "decimal" bit or an "octal" bit, since a bit is a single quanta of data in a binary system. So a bit can either be on or off, true or false, 1 or 0. So not sure where you are getting decimal/octal bit from. Even if you meant byte, that still doesn't make sense.

@TheShadowsLotus We have a hundreds place because ten tens is 100; in base eight (which is useful in some computing languages and other mathematical alleyways), you'd have a place for eight eights, and eight eights is 64. (He explained this in the song, you know.)

I'm still confused...

I always whip this out... The clip, silly... When someone goes on about how they don't understand Common Core math. These are usually people too young to understand that what they *know how to do* was already "the new math"...

Might as well switch to base 16.

That's how I was taught to do math though. It makes more sense than what he was doing in the first part...

" '64? Where did 64 come into this?' I hear you cry."

@lipsynchORswim hex is actually a way of binary conversion, all computers at their very roots run in base 2, as you mentioned, hex just takes all those lines of 1 and 0s and turns them into something slightly more manageable

Everyone's aware that this was originally recorded in the 1960s, right?

@cras17 The earliest computers [S-100 Bus] I worked with - and programmed assembly language a little - used base 8.

after watching this video i have decided to do all of my math hw for a week in base 8

Ohhhhhh I want to hear this problem done in base 12!