ARITHMETICS BY CHARLES H. GLEASON PRINCIPAL OF THE SUMMER AVENUE SCHOOL NEWARK, NEW JERSEY AND CHARLES B. GILBERT FORMERLY SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, ST. PAUL 66 NEWARK, AND ROCHESTER 99 66 GUIDE AUTHOR OF STEPPING STONES TO LITERATURE, BOOK THREE NEW YORK B. GILBERT AND COMPANY fhe 120 Boylston St., Boston. PREFACE THE two main functions of an elementary arithmetic are to secure such familiarity with the four tables that the combinations become automatic, and to create inductively mathematical concepts and apperceiving bases. The work necessary to this latter end is expansive and suggestive rather than definitive. Following this comes the need for a technical book which, while still suggestive, is increasingly conclusive, giving the children a satisfying sense of definiteness and mathematical certainty, the only certainty possible to them. Such a book should also at least hint at the higher and broader uses of the subject. Book III of the Gilbert Arithmetics aims to satisfy these demands of maturer minds. While taking for granted a knowledge of the tables and processes of the four fundamental principles, it contains a restatement in a more exact form of the essential definitions and rules given in Book II. It includes a review and an amplification of denominate numbers and of common and decimal fractions. The principles of percentage are fully demonstrated and traced to their origin in a manner so clear as to remove much of the difficulty usually attending the study of this subject. The applications of percentage to the practical problems of ordinary business are treated very fully and simply, the chapter on banking and money matters being especially instructive. iii |