Skip counting is a mathematics technique taught as a kind of multiplication in reform mathematics

Reform mathematics

Reform mathematics is an approach to mathematics education, particularly in North America. It is based on principles explained in 1989 by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics . The NCTM document, Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics, attempted to set forth a vision...

 textbooks such as TERC

TERC

TERC may refer to:*Telomerase RNA component, a human gene.*The developers of the Investigations in Numbers, Data, and Space mathematics curriculum.*Technical Education Research Centers*CSIRO Tropical Ecosystems Research Centre...

. In older textbooks, this technique is called counting by twos (threes, fours, etc.).

In skip counting by twos, a person can count to 10 by only naming every other number: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10. Combining the base (two, in this example) with the number of groups (five, in this example) produces the standard multiplication equation: two multiplied by five equals ten.

Another similar method is coloring in squares in a 100s chart to show multiplication

Multiplication

Multiplication is the mathematical operation of scaling one number by another. It is one of the four basic operations in elementary arithmetic ....

 patterns. Critics such as Mathematically Correct

Mathematically Correct

Mathematically Correct is a website created by educators, parents, mathematicians, and scientists who were concerned about the direction of reform mathematics curricula based on NCTM standards...

 however believe that it is an inadequate method to teach multiplication and ineffective for computation compared to traditional mathematics

Traditional mathematics

Traditional mathematics is a term used to describe the predominant methods of Mathematics education in the United States in the early-to-mid 20th century. The term is often used to contrast historically predominant methods with non-traditional approaches to math education...

methods of multiplication.