A lot of people are having trouble with this math problem that requires some basic algebra

[SheilaT]

173. My UICSM course was a sort of "New Math",

but it was taught in a way that promoted a deep understanding of what we were learning. At the very beginning it went more slowly than the traditional math program, but soon forged on ahead. We only spent one semester on geometry, in which we did not memorize theorems and then work problems, but we derived all the theorems from what we learned. Our proofs wound up being quite rigorous, it seems, although don't ask me to recall details. By the third year we were doing finite math (and I only know that term because years later when I told college math teachers some of what we did, they were very surprised, and said that stuff normally wasn't taught until well into college) and calculus. Which normally comes after at least three, maybe four years of h.s. math.

My point is, beyond basic arithmetic, I did very little rote memorization. Well, we memorized the quadratic equation, but first we'd derived it. Just don't ask me how we did. I suspect the UICSM program was harder to teach because of the way the teacher had to bring the students along. But oh, boy, did we learn a lot.