The problem: Collective Math.
Math should never be a group activity. Today in class, we could not seem to figure out a very simple problem. There are two reasons why math in groups never works:
1) competition: Everyone, of course, wants to be the first one to blurt out the correct answer. So people will sacrifice accuracy for the chance that they'll be right and appear smart. You'll notice the first person to blurt (oh what a great word) out the answer usually adds "right?". This translates to: "I'm a genius, but I'm occasionally prone to mistakes, though I don't think I made a mistake this time because I am a genius."
2) process: The more severe problem with group-math is that, as my junior-high math teacher Mr. Troya would have said: "There is always more than one way to skin the cat." In fact, I think there are so many ways of doing something like, say, adding numbers in one's head, that in any group of people there will rarely be parallel thinking processes. Thus, as soon as one person spits out part of their process (a valid one) everyone else tries to align their processes with that person's. Everyone forgets what they were thinking about and tries the new path of reasoning. In the end, it's never as efficient as a single person doing the problem in their own way.
Why do I write about this? I have no f-ing clue. Just something I thought about today.
PS - In the process of this writing I was inspired to find a picture or at least a description of Mr. Troya. I'm not really sure how his name is spelled but I was surprised to find such an extensive website about my junior-high school.