Car Talk Puzzler (Palindrome Mileage)
May 23, 2011, 12:00 amNew Math Puzzler up this week:
Tommy’s Drive to Work
RAY: Tommy has a new car, it’s 19 years old. … It has one of those newfangled six-digit odometers. It can register as many as 999,999 miles.
So one fine morning last week, Tommy gets into his new car to drive to work. He fires up his eng...
Candle Burn #WCYDWT
May 23, 2011, 12:00 amThe structure of this post comes from Dan Meyer’s Three Acts of A Mathematical Story.
Act 1
Play the teaser video.
Have students write down questions they have about the video. Ask them to be silent during this part so that other student’s questions don’t affect their own. By this po...
Circle of Differences Puzzle
May 19, 2011, 12:00 amGreat article from the NY Times on the Danger of Praise, with an excellent puzzle included:
Circle of Differences
The numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4 are written at the corners of a large square. At each step, at the midpoint of each side, write the positive (or absolute value of the) difference betw...
Car Talk Puzzler: Math + English =
May 14, 2011, 12:00 amCar Talk has a new math puzzler up that mixes math and science:
There Was an Old Man…RAY: I’m going to recite an equation and, from that, you are going to give me a limerick that consists of five lines.
TOM: Does this limerick include Nantucket or the band at the Waldorf Astoria?
RAY: ...
Tech Trick: Quickly posting homework answers online
May 13, 2011, 12:00 amHere is a quick tech trick for quickly posting your homework key (or any document that doesn’t need to be editable). Because of my new homework policy, I’ve been posting my homework key on the classroom website on the day that I give the assignment out. This allows the students to check their answ...
Link: Learning through Problem Solving
May 6, 2011, 12:00 amGreat post from John Scammell walking through a how-to for “wcydwt” (what can you do with this) or “ltps” (learning through problem solving). Can we just call it great teaching?
Learning Through Problem Solving Process
1. Present the problem.
- The problem is best presented using a multime...
Link: SBG… Why?
May 3, 2011, 12:00 amGreat post from Terie Engelbrecht:
1) I do it so students can focus on learning, not points or effort.
2) I do it for students who take longer to make their own meaning; those same students that often get plowed under in the points-chasing game school often is.
3) I do it for students who may...
IcoSoKu
May 3, 2011, 12:00 amFrom the brilliant(?) minds at vat19.com, I present to you, the IcoSoKu:
Just thousands, that’s it?
In my list of mathematical strengths probability does not appear, but there are: 12 unique numbers (vertices of an icosahedron), so 12! = 479,001,600 ways to arrange them. But because of t...
Car Talk Puzzler: In Search for Bogus Coins
April 28, 2011, 12:00 amIn Search of the Bogus Coins
RAY: We have seven stacks of coins, each with 100 coins. Real coins weigh ten grams, and phony coins weigh 11 grams. We’re going to weigh the coins on an analytic scale, which works just like your average bathroom scale – but it’s accurate to within a tenth of a gram...
Math Pic: Westminster Abbey
April 27, 2011, 12:00 amLooking up at the ceiling of Westminster Abbey in Henry VII’s Lady Chapel.
No questions, just thought it was cool.