Christmas in July Math Problem

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

[Photo by Reenie-Just Reenie.]

In honor of my Google searchers, to demonstrate the power of bar diagrams to model ratio problems, and just because math is fun…

Eccentric Aunt Ethel leaves her Christmas tree up year ’round, but she changes the decorations for each passing season. This July, Ethel wanted a patriotic theme of flowers, ribbons, and colored lights.

When she stretched out her three light strings (100 lights each) to check the bulbs, she discovered that several were broken or burned-out. Of the lights that still worked, the ratio of red bulbs to white ones was 7:3. She had half as many good blue bulbs as red ones. But overall, she had to throw away one out of every 10 bulbs.

How many of each color light bulb did Ethel have?

Before reading further, pull out some scratch paper. How would you solve this problem? How would you teach it to a middle school student?

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What’s Wrong with “Repeated Addition”?

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

[Photo by Alejandra Mavroski.]

Myrtle called it The article that launched a thousand posts…, and counting comments on this and several other blogs, that may not be too much of an exaggeration. Yet the discussion feels incomplete — I have not been able to put into words all that I want to say. Thus, at the risk of once again revealing my mathematical ignorance, I am going to try another response to Keith Devlin’s multiplication articles.

Let me state up front that I speak as a teacher, not as a mathematician. I am not qualified, nor do I intend, to argue about the implications of Peano’s Axioms. My experience lies primarily in teaching K-10, from elementary arithmetic through basic algebra and geometry. I remember only snippets of my college math classes, back in the days when we worried more about nuclear winter than global warming.

I will start with a few things we can all agree on…

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Christmas in July?

Posted on by Denise Gaskins


[Photo by krisdecurtis.]

Being moderately tech-illiterate, I don’t pay much attention to SEO (Search Engine Optimization, the magic art of convincing Google to fetch me more readers). Even so, I enjoy browsing through the list of search terms that have brought visitors to my blog. Sometimes I find ideas to write about, or motivation to move an old draft off the back burner, or simply a chuckle at the funny things people look for on the Web.

This month, however, the most popular search term seems strangely out of season — more than 300 people have come to this site wanting “Christmas” or “Christmas tree.”

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Answers: Euclid’s Geometric Algebra

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

Alexandria JonesRemember the Math Adventurer’s Rule: Figure it out for yourself! Whenever I give a problem in an Alexandria Jones story, I will try to post the answer soon afterward. But don’t peek! If I tell you the answer, you miss out on the fun of solving the puzzle. So if you haven’t worked these problems yet, go back to the original post. Figure them out for yourself — and then check the answers just to prove that you got them right.

Euclid’s Geometric Algebra

Continue reading Answers: Euclid’s Geometric Algebra

Crazy 4 Math Contest

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

I heard of this contest in an e-mail from ClickSchooling:

Kids, share your creative math ideas! Describe how you use math in any activity you love to do — a sport, game, craft, hobby, or anything else.

Send in a description of the activity and how it uses math, as well as any drawing(s) or diagram(s). There are many great prizes to be won. Please ensure you’ve read and understand our contest’s rules and regulations before entering.

Sounds like fun! If you want to enter, act quickly. Entries must be submitted online by July 30th. Visit Crazy4Math.com for more information and to check out the winners from previous years.

Euclid’s Geometric Algebra

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

Picture from MacTutor Archives.

After the Pythagorean crisis with the square root of two, Greek mathematicians tried to avoid working with numbers. Instead, the Greeks used geometry to demonstrate mathematical concepts. A line can be drawn any length, so straight lines became a sort of non-algebraic variable.

You can see an example of this in The Pythagorean Proof, where Alexandria Jones represented the sides of her triangle by the letters a and b. These sides may be any length. The sizes of the squares will change with the triangle sides, but the relationship a^2 + b^2 = c^2 is always true for every right triangle.

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If It Ain’t Repeated Addition, What Is It?

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

[Photo by SuperFantastic.]

Keith Devlin’s latest article, It Ain’t No Repeated Addition, brought me up short. I have used the “multiplication is repeated addition” formula many times in the past — for instance, in explaining order of operations. But according to Devlin:

Multiplication simply is not repeated addition, and telling young pupils it is inevitably leads to problems when they subsequently learn that it is not.

I found myself arguing with the article as I read it. (Does anybody else do that?) If multiplication is not repeated addition, then what in the world is it?

Continue reading If It Ain’t Repeated Addition, What Is It?