Thanks, Dottie. That helps. I see now. It doesn't seem like navel-gazing (smirk), and it does seem better than the old-school method overall.

I guess I like the more intuitive start, but then I'd also want to make sure they drill sufficiently on the tools. I don't know why they can't do both. Neither is sufficient on its own, I don't think. Though 6 problems is a lot better than the 50+ we'd have to do...and none of that "do the last 10 that are hardest and skip the rest" stuff for us either. Ugh. That right there was enough to make me hate math forever. Calculus just put the nail in the coffin!

A more conceptual tack would have appealed to me, for sure.

Kriston