Originally Posted by La Texican
Wasn't there a thread on here recently about how strange it is that we treat math differently than reading? It was a great observation that we will let kids read or hear a wide range of stories without worrying so much that they get more out of one story than another, but with math we say, "you can't look at this until you learn that other thing." .... Now my kid learns what's called "separate strands" of math. .... We have a lot of separate math strands going, ....

These "strands" should be placed in the following context:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_order
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasi_order