So I'm not the only one who thinks that front-end estimation is lame. I've never understood why people need to be taught multiple algorithms for something as trivial as "round the numbers and do the operation." Yet my kids have spent hours of their lives doing worksheet after worksheet of this stuff.
I think it is because the some teachers are fundamentally weak in math. They had a hard time using the short cuts to do mental rough calculation themselves. Actually lot of the math education problems are probably due to the facts our teachers are not math persons themselves. The problems with mathematicians embracing Every Day Math and the like is that they were good with math and forgot and did not know what it was to learn math for the time as a child.
