Abstract
The transition from arithmetic to algebra is one of the basic areas of the primary school mathematics curriculum. The aim of this paper is to show how the two topics, i.e. algebra and arithmetic, are interrelated and to provide mathematics teachers with a number of examples of situations in which algebraic knowledge of multiplying polynomials can be used to multiply or factor numbers.
The paper then concludes by recalling, in addition to a general algorithm for faster multiplication, an algorithm for written square roots.