Question above is pretty blunt but was doing a study for a college course and came across that stat. How is that possible? My high school sucked but I was well equipped even with that sub standard level of education for college. Obviously income is a thing but to think 1 out of 5 American adults is categorized as illiterate is…astounding. Now poor media literacy I get, but not this. Edit: this was from a department of education report from 2022. Just incase people are curious where that comes from. It does also specify as literate in English so maybe not as grim as I thought.
There are still plenty of instances where doing arithmetic quickly in your head is useful (figuring out a tip at the cash register, for example) that memorizing it can have advantages.
I agree that mental math is useful, but in scenarios like that, times tables aren’t really useful since the tables are rotely memorized and rarely does a bill fall nicely into a times table.
Better to learn a technique like “move the decimal place left one position and double that number to get 20%”.
But realistically, with a phone in your pocket, it’s not much more effort to pull it out and use the calculator.