Hi Everyone!! This article will share Arithmetic Poem Questions & Answers.
This poem is written by Carl Sandburg. In this poem, the poet describes a subject which is the bugbear of many. In my previous posts, I have shared the questions and answers of Street Cries and Ozymandias so, you can check these posts as well.
Arithmetic Poem Questions & Answers
Question 1: Pick out phrases or lines from the poem which convey the following ideas.
1. Arithmetic is about predicting profit and loss:
Answer: ‘Arithmetic tells you how many you lose or win if you know how many you had before you lost or won.’
2. Arithmetic makes demands on the brain:
Answer: ‘Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand to your pencil to your paper till you get the answer.’
3. Arithmetic deals with impossibly long calculations:
Answer: ‘the number gets bigger and bigger and goes higher and higher and only arithmetic can tell you what the number is when you decide to quit doubling.’
4. Memorizing tables is very difficult:
Answer: ‘and you carry the multiplication table in your head and hope you won’t lose it.’
5. When you get the answer right it makes you very happy:
Answer: ‘Arithmetic is where the answer is right and everything is nice and you can look out of the window and see the blue sky.’
Question 2: To what does the poet compare numbers in arithmetic with and how?
Answer: The poet compares numbers in arithmetic with pigeons that fly in and out of your head. It represents that how during problem solving various figures and calculations occupy our thoughts.
Question 3: Does the poet think that arithmetic is an easy and enjoyable subject? Give reasons for your answer.
Answer: No, the poet doesn’t think that arithmetic is an easy and enjoyable subject. Rather, he describes it as a bugbear and finds being unable to arrive at the right answer extremely frustrating. He finds it hard to remember the multiplication tables and believes that questions in arithmetic can be quite tricky.
Question 4: Does the poet think it is useful to study this subject?
Answer: The poet who is not fond of this subject doesn’t think that it is useful to study this subject.
Question 5: What according to the poem, arithmetic tells you?
Answer: According to the poem, arithmetic serves as a means of calculating gain or loss based on the data that you already had.
So, these were the Questions & Answers.