Wow.  I must say this question surprises me on a number sense forum.  Nevertheless, it is a fair question.

When I was in high school, people were always telling me how I was wasting my time learning different tricks.  What use will it be later?  Why take a test that just depends on how many tricks you know?  How is that a measure of how smart you are?  Why is that fun for you?

Well, I guess the answer to that question is this.  The reason why I love number sense is not because I can impress my friends by doing math in my head.  All that is, is a trick they don't know.  What's the honor in that?  The reason I love it, is because it requires me to think outside of the box.  Everyone else does things ONE way, the way they were taught.  But in math, there is always a different way of doing things.  If I asked people to multiply 12 x 33 they would:

• 12 x
  
• 33
  
• ----
  
• 36 +
  
• 360
  
• -----
  
• 396

That is the way they were taught.  But number sense teaches you how to think about things differently.  If you manipulate the numbers the problem becomes easy to multiply.  This idea of doing things is not only related to math.  You start to think about things in real life differently too.  You don't just accept something just because that is the way it's done, you think, how can I change it to make it easier.  This is called efficiency.  It's a great gift to have that most people take for granted.

My wife calls me "Mr. Efficient" because I do things differently than everyone else.  I think differently than anyone else.  I attribute that to the values I learned in number sense.  I think number sense is great.  Don't get me wrong, I like calculator, computer science, and math too, but number sense is where my heart lies. 

That question caused me to get on my soap box.  But I am glad that you asked it.  I think it is good for everyone to consider.

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