These puzzles look like a lot of fun for whole number and integer arithmetic review. I think they would make a great warm-up at the beginning of a class or math club meeting.
Hat tip: MathPuzzle.com
Skit: The Handshake Problem
[Feature photo above by Tobias Wolter (CC-BY-SA-3.0) via Wikimedia Commons.]
If seven people meet at a party, and each person shakes the hand of everyone else exactly once, how many handshakes are there in all?
In general, if n people meet and shake hands all around, how many handshakes will there be?
Our homeschool co-op held an end-of-semester assembly. Each class was supposed to demonstrate something they had learned. I threatened to hand out a ten question pop quiz on integer arithmetic, but instead my pre-algebra students presented this skit. You may adjust the script to fit the available number of players.
Nothing Is Everything
Does this proof at squareCircleZ blog mean that, if I get nothing done today, I can cross off everything on my list?
Poetry for Pi Day
Here are two poems in honor of pi, from the Mathematical Poetry site:
Happy Pi Day I
It can be of no practical use to know that Pi is irrational, but if we can know, it surely would be intolerable not to know.
I don’t remember anyone ever mentioning Pi Day when I was in school, but any excuse to celebrate math sounds like fun. March 14 at 1:59 (a.m. or p.m.) is about as close as the calendar can get to 3.14159…
In Honor of the Standardized Testing Season…
[Feature photo above by Alberto G. (CC-BY-SA-2.0) via flickr.]
The school experience makes a tremendous difference in a child’s learning. Which of the following students would you rather be?
I continued to do arithmetic with my father, passing proudly through fractions to decimals. I eventually arrived at the point where so many cows ate so much grass, and tanks filled with water in so many hours. I found it quite enthralling.
— Agatha Christie
An Autobiography
…or…
“Can you do Addition?” the White Queen asked. “What’s one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one?”
“I don’t know,” said Alice. “I lost count.”
“She can’t do Addition,” the Red Queen interrupted. “Can you do Subtraction? Take nine from eight.”
“Nine from eight I can’t, you know,” Alice replied very readily: “but—”
“She can’t do Subtraction,” said the White Queen. “Can you do Division? Divide a loaf by a knife — what’s the answer to that?”
“I suppose—” Alice was beginning, but the Red Queen answered for her. “Bread-and-butter, of course.”
“She can’t do sums a bit!” the Queens said together, with great emphasis.— Lewis Carroll
Through the Looking Glass
…in other words…
If you could lead through testing, the U.S. would lead the world in all education categories. When are people going to understand you don’t fatten your lambs by weighing them?
— Jonathan Kozol
at Westfield State College’s 157th Commencement
Continue reading In Honor of the Standardized Testing Season…
Math Quotes VII: Problems Worthy of Attack
Time to catch up on our blackboard quotes.
Two Fathoms Deep and Stuck in Muck
“I suppose you are two fathoms deep in mathematics, and if you are, then God help you. For so am I, only with this difference: I stick fast in the mud at the bottom, and there I shall remain.”
— Charles Darwin
quoted in the Platonic Realms collection
Math Carnival #2
The math geeks have hit the town at the Second Carnival of Mathematics, which features a wide variety of articles to enjoy—many of which are admittedly over my head.
I liked these:
My Favourite Theorems 1 (Halting Problem)
It’s been a very busy few weeks, and I never got around to posting last week’s carnivals. Here are a couple of math-related posts from last week’s Carnival of Homeschooling:
How the four operations become two
Words of Wisdom from Reader’s Digest
And from the Carnival of Education:
Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math 
