Aaargh—I missed it again! I suppose I should know better by now, but I sent in my entries (on time at least) via the blog carnival submission form. I have lost more carnival entries that way, but I still let myself be lured in by the ease of using a form, rather than writing a simple email by hand. Silly, lazy me.
Anyway, the latest Carnival of Mathematics is now open at a mispelt bog, with plenty of fun graphics and interesting things to read about.
Would you like to study “the knowledge of all existing things and all obscure secrets”? That is how Scribe Ahmose (also translated Ahmes) described his mathematical papyrus. Ahmose’s masterpiece is now called the Rhind Papyrus, after Alexander Henry Rhind, a Scotsman who was one of the first archaeologists to make meticulous records of his excavations (rather than simply hunting for treasures). Rhind purchased the papyrus from an antiquities dealer in Luxor, Egypt, in 1858.
Ahmose’s writing included a huge table of fractions as well as story problems, geometry, algebra, and accounting. Can you solve any of Scribe Ahmose’s problems?
Excellent post (quoting Rafe Esquith, author of Teach Like Your Hair’s On Fire) over at Mindless Math Mutterings.
Have you considered experimenting with writing in your math class this year? It seems that math journals are a growing fad, and for good reason:
Writing is how we think our way into a subject and make it our own.
Math journal entries can be as simple as class notes, or they can be research projects that take hours of experimentation and pondering. Students may use the journal to store their thoughts as they work several days to solve a challenge problem of the week, or they might jot down quick reflections about what they learned in today’s math class.
I have one last puzzle for those of you who are following my Alexandria Jones series on hieroglyphic math and the Egyptian scribe’s method of multiplication by doubling. Here is the “teaser” problem from the cover of the Sept./Oct.1998 issue of my newsletter:
One more Egyptian math puzzle (pdf, 53KB)
[This article begins a series rescued from my old blog. Moving has been a long process, but I’m finally unpacking the last cardboard box! To read the entire series, click here: elementary problem solving series.]
Most young students solve story problems by the flash of insight method: When they read the problem, they know almost instinctively how to solve it. This is fine for problems like:
There are 7 children. 2 of them are girls. How many boys are there?
As problems get more difficult, however, that flash of insight becomes less reliable, so we find our students staring blankly at their paper or out the window. They complain, “I don’t know what to do. It’s too hard!”
We need to give our students a tool that will help them when insight fails.
…with Princess Kitten‘s baby sitting on my lap, sucking her thumb paw. Of course, it is difficult to get any typing done, and the laundry that is beeping at me from the other room will just have to wait its turn. Peace is a purring kitten.
The Carnival of Homeschooling #85: School Stuff Edition at Dewey’s Trehouse is stocking up for back-to-school season. From comfy couches to high-tech gadgets, they have a bit of everything. Be sure to check it out.
And the 132nd Carnival of Education comes to my neighborhood—well, to Illinois at any rate—hosted at Education Matters. Plenty of great reading to browse, think about, and post comments on. Enjoy!
This post has been revised to incorporate all the suggestions in the comments below, plus many more activities. Please update your bookmarks:
Or continue reading the original article…
What we know about ancient Egyptian mathematics comes primarily from two papyri, the first one written around 1850 BC. 
This is called the Moscow papyrus, because it now belongs to Moscow’s Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts. The scroll contains 25 problems, mostly practical examples of various calculations. Problem 14, which finds the volume of a frustrum (a pyramid with its top cut off), is often cited by mathematicians as the most impressive Egyptian pyramid of all.
Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math 
