@squirrel I only ever heard about it because of some Peanuts strips about it.

@rainwarrior i know that, i just mean the example in tom lehrer's song made sense to me

or at least, i remember so, it was a long time ago since i heard the song

@squirrel I just listened to the song, had never heard it before.

I think the "new math" part is just the base 8 thing?

@squirrel Oh I guess there was kind of a change in the standard way to describe subtraction/borrowing, but that part actually stuck around (unlike teaching bases)?

@squirrel This version has an animation that kinda shows the difference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIKGV2cTgqA

And on Wikipedia it's "Austrian" vs "American" method:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subtraction#Austrian_method

@squirrel Like he makes a joke about "7 from 3" or "8 from 4" which is just about whether that carry (in the old "Austrian" method) gets stuck on the top or bottom; either way works.

@squirrel When I was a kid we were taught the "American" method of crossing out the number etc. but I remember some of the older teachers would use the other way sometimes.

@squirrel (I had totally forgotten about there being another way to do subtraction, was kind of fun to remember.)

(Also this indirectly gave me another memory of the Alf math game for DOS.)

@rainwarrior yeah i use the one Wikipedia calls American method