Welcome to the Math Teachers At Play blog carnival — which is not just for math teachers.
Do you enjoy math? I hope so! If not, browsing these links just may change your mind. Most of these posts were submitted by the bloggers themselves; others are drawn from my overflowing Google Reader. From preschool to high school, there are plenty of interesting things to learn.
Let the mathematical fun begin…
Just as I was looking for a creative Valentine’s craft for Kitten, this showed up in my inbox:
Xi at 360 provides step-by-step instructions, with photos:
And for more Valentine’s Day fun:
[Photo by Nestor Galina.]
Our power finally came back on this afternoon after a couple of cold, dark nights.
We heated the house with candles and stove-top burners (propane). We found that if you get enough candles lit in a room, it really can make a difference, and the stove was able to keep the kitchen in the upper-50’s, even above 60 degrees at times, which was pretty comfortable. We dressed in lots of layers and wore gloves, drank a plenty of coffee and hot chocolate, listened to oldies on the battery-powered radio, and went to bed early each night. (Hooray for sleeping bags!)
When a kid is feeling bad about being stuck with a problem, or just very anxious, I sometimes ask him to make as many mistakes as he can, and as outrageous as he can. Laughter happens (which is valuable by itself, and not only for the mood — deep breathing brings oxygen to the brain). Then the kid starts making mistakes. In the process, features of the problem become much clearer, and in many cases a way to a solution presents itself.
— Maria Droujkova
Natural Math discussion of math club activities
While I was collecting entries for the Math Teachers at Play #35 blog carnival, I ran across this post by Dave Lanovaz:
Welcome to the 34th edition of the Math Teachers at Play Carnival. Since it is new year, we will be talking about cakes, best of 2010, and calendars…
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/goetter/2352128932/"Photo by Raphael Goetter via Flickr
Alex and Leon enjoyed their baby sister, but they were amazed at how much work taking care of a baby could be. One particularly colicky night, everyone in the family took turns holding the baby, rocking the baby, patting her back, and walking her around before she finally succumbed to sleep.
Then Alex collapsed on the couch, and Leon sank into the recliner. They teased each other with these story problems.
2011 will be a fantastic year — or at least, a prime one! (See these posts by Gary, Pat, and James.) But as we move into the new year, it’s also a good time to look back and to look ahead: What did we accomplished last year? And what comes next?
More specifically, for bloggers:
So here is my retrospective look at the most popular blog posts of 2010, along with related blogging goals (or dreams?) for 2011.
If you haven’t subscribed to Vi Hart’s blog yet, what are you waiting for?
[Photo from Wikipedia.]
Two of the most popular New Year’s Resolutions are to spend more time with family and friends, and to get more exercise. The 2011 Mathematics Game is a chance to do both at once.
So grab a partner, slip into your workout clothes, and pump up those mental muscles!
Use the digits in the year 2011 to write mathematical expressions for the counting numbers 1 through 100.
- All four digits must be used in each expression. You may not use any other numbers except 2, 0, 1, and 1.
- You may use the arithmetic operations +, -, x, ÷, sqrt (square root), ^ (raise to a power), and ! (factorial). You may also use parentheses, brackets, or other grouping symbols.
- You may use a decimal point to create numbers such as .1, .02, etc.
- Multi-digit numbers such as 20 or 102 may be used, but preference is given to solutions that avoid them.
Bonus Rules
You may use the overhead-bar (vinculum), dots, or brackets to mark a repeating decimal.You may use multifactorials:
- (n!)! = a factorial of a factorial, which is not the same as a multifactorial
- n!! = a double factorial = the product of all integers from 1 to n that have the same parity (odd or even) as n
- n!!! = a triple factorial = the product of all integers from 1 to n that are equal to n mod 3
[Note to teachers: The bonus rules are not part of the Math Forum guidelines. They make a significant difference in the number of possible solutions, however, and they should not be too difficult for high school students or advanced middle schoolers.]
Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math 