long division in the time of computers

"with apologies to Gabriel Garcia Marquez" (pdf file)

"When we assert that “this is the factorization of a number into primes,” the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic is lurking in the background."

One of these days I will be a person who knows what that means.

[pause]

Well, I have now skimmed the entire pdf file and I have no idea what it's talking about, or what the author's views on the place of long division in the curriculum is or is not.

So that was enlightening.


the long version (pdf file)