I met someone after church the other day, and the conversation went like this
There seems to be a general impression (and I’m deliberately overstating this) that the only use for math is to teach it. Even some teachers believe this, apparently. Here’s another conversation I had with someone at a bus stop :
[This is a back issue of this website’s newsletter]
If you are a sudoku addict, this newsletter has some good news for you – Dr Mike’s Math Games for Kids now has an infinite number of printable sudoku puzzles! Read on for more details… But first, some exciting news from another website – Timez Attack 3.0 is out!
Continue reading Newsletter #35 : Timez Attack 3, Printable Sudokus and Easter
I found out some great news the other day… Timez Attack 3 is now available!
In case you haven’t heard of Timez Attack, it’s an absolutely great educational video game. I bought it for my son to play with, and he is now top of his class at times tables. I wrote a review of Timez Attack here, and another review, comparing it to another game here.
[News Flash (17 September 2010) Timez Attack 4 is out!!]
How long and wide must a rectangle be, for its area to equal its perimeter? Assume the width and length are whole numbers.
This is a nice little puzzle to let younger kids explore – if they find the puzzle as interesting or frustrating as I expect, they’ll remember the formulae for perimeter and area for the rest of their lives. For older kids, a bit of algebra gives the answer quickly.
One of my son’s teachers came up with a scheme for motivating her students to do well. I’m sure many similar schemes have been devised in the past, but I thought I’d share it here. Continue reading Silly Hat Day In School
Consider the sentence :
“Thsi sentence hsa three errors.”
The puzzle is to find the errors. Two of them are easy to find :
but where’s the third error?
[This is a back-issue of this website’s newsletter]
Sudoku became popular around the same time this website went online – but somehow I never put up any sudoku puzzles on the site. I’m not sure exactly why. Perhaps I thought sudoku was just a passing fad, or perhaps there seemed to be so many other good ideas for the site… and I didn’t want to produce “just another” sudoku page.
Are Asians better at math? It might not be a politically correct question, but anyone who has been teaching math for a while will have encountered it – at least if they’ve been teaching with their eyes open!
Top students in math are “often” of Chinese origin. Studies comparing overall math performance of school students show that English-speaking Western countries are falling behind European countries and the more developed Asian countries. It might not be politically correct to think about these questions, but it’s stupid not to think about them. Is this a real phenomenon? Is it important? And what should we do about it? Can we get answers based on evidence, rather than supposition or heresay? Continue reading Are Asians Better At Math?
One of my favourite puzzles of all times is a bit tough for a typical lower-school kid. It goes like this :
Five men and a monkey are stranded on a desert island. They spend the day searching for food, and by evening, they have collected a big pile of coconuts. Too tired to do anything but sleep, they agree to share the coconuts out in the morning.
However, one of the men wakes up just before midnight. He doesn’t trust his companions, so he goes to the pile of coconuts to take his share. he divides the coconuts into five equal piles, with one left over. He takes his share and hides it, gives the spare coconut to the monkey, collects the rest back into a pile, and goes back to sleep. Continue reading Coconuts and Diamonds
We have some pumpkin plants growing in our yard. I counted them at one point, and there were 24 plants. This inspired a little puzzle –
If I have 24 pumpkin plants, and half of them grow a pumpkin, and half of those that grow a pumpkin grow another, and half of those that grow another grow yet another still – then how many pumpkins do I get in the end? Continue reading Pumpkin Puzzle