High School Math Challenge

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

The USA Mathematical Talent Search (USAMTS) has posted its current set of challenge problems, the first of four rounds scheduled for the 2007-2008 school year. USAMTS is a free competition open to all United States middle school and high school students. Young mathematicians have a little over a month (until October 9) to write and send in solutions for the five questions.

According to the USAMTS website:

Student solutions to the USAMTS problems are graded by mathematicians and comments are returned to the students. Our goal is to help all students develop their problem solving skills, improve their technical writing abilities, and mature mathematically while having fun. We wish to foster not only insight, ingenuity and creativity, but also the virtue of perseverance, which is equally essential in scientific endeavors.

A mere five questions. How hard can it be? (Ha!)

A Very Short History of Mathematics

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

This paper was read to the Adams Society (St. John’s College Mathematical Society) at their 25th anniversary dinner, Michaelmas Term, 1948. [Warning: Do not attempt to read this while drinking coffee or other spittable beverage!]

Hat tip: I found this through the math carnival at a mispelt bog.

Update: The original page has disappeared from the internet, or at least I cannot find it any more, but the Internet Archive Wayback Machine came to the rescue. After my plea for help, James Clare pointed me to the article’s new home.

Carnival of Mathematics XV

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

Carnival of MathematicsAaargh—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.

Egyptian Geometry and Other Challenges

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

Rhind papyrus

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?

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Writing to Learn Math

Posted on by Denise Gaskins
2009 Challenge - Day 72: Pencil
Image by ☼zlady via Flickr

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.

—William Zinsser
Writing to Learn

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.

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Another Egyptian Math Puzzle

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

Pyramids clip artI 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)

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Elementary Problem Solving: The Tools

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

[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.

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7 Things to Do with a Hundred Chart

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

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…

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Egyptian Math Puzzles

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

What we know about ancient Egyptian mathematics comes primarily from two papyri, the first one written around 1850 BC. Moscow papyrus problem 14This 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.

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