Skit: Knights and Knaves Logic Puzzles

photo by puuikibeach via flickr

Our homeschool co-op held an end-of-semester assembly. Each class was supposed to demonstrate something they had learned. I planned to set up a static display showing some of our projects, like the fractal pop-up card and the game of Nim, but the students voted to do a skit based on the logic puzzles of Raymond Smullyan.

We had a small class (only four students), but you can easily divide up the lines make room for more players. We created signs from half-sheets of poster board with each native’s line on front and whether she was a knight or knave on the flip side. In the course of a skit, there isn’t enough time to really think through the puzzles, so the audience had to vote based on first impressions — which gave us a fair showing of all opinions on each puzzle.

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Happy Birthday, Einstein (Part 4)

Albert Einstein’s birthday was a couple of weeks ago, but today we have a belated celebration. MinutePhysics has finally finished its series on Einstein’s “wonder year” discoveries of 1905. In the last video, we began learning about the Special Theory of Relativity. This time, we find out how that theory leads to the most famous equation in the world…

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Math Blog Carnival Update

photo by jaycoxfilm via flickr

Blog renovations are nearly complete, including an overhaul to the Math Teachers at Play blog carnival. The MTaP carnival is a monthly collection of tips, tidbits, games, and activities for students and teachers of preschool through pre-college mathematics. It’s not just for “math teachers”! We welcome entries from parents, students, teachers, homeschoolers, and just plain folks. If you like to learn new things and play around with ideas, you are sure to find something of interest.

We will be publishing MTaP during the second full (Monday-Friday) week of each month, with the exact day of publication during that week left to the host blogger’s discretion. For more information, check out:

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MTaP Blog Carnival Submission Form

Photo by Bob Jagendorf via flickr.

The blog carnival website has been unreliable for months now, and it’s high time we came up with another way for you to submit your posts to the Math Teachers at Play blog carnival. So when I saw the snazzy new Carnival of Mathematics submission form, I knew I had to learn to use Google Docs.

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Used Book Price Shock

Someone mentioned one of my old books on the Living Math forum, which made me curious how the used copies were doing at Amazon.com. These are simple little books, 100 loose pages comb-bound together. I have seen ridiculous prices before, but this one takes the cake.

Thankfully, there are a few used book dealers with more sense, or at least with more reasonable computer-automated pricing routines.

I am still at work revising (and greatly expanding) the old books so I can publish new editions. If you haven’t voted yet in my “What Do You Want from a Math Book?” survey, I’d love to hear your opinion!

Math Teachers at Play #48 via Math Is Not a Four-Letter Word

Ready for math games, great books, tangrams, logic, pi, quadratics, inspiration, and plenty of fun? Check out Bon’s just-posted Math Teachers at Play “Fifteen-Word Sentence Challenge” blog carnival:

Blog Carnival for Math Teachers at Play Number 48 Is Here – With a Fun Twist!

It’s my turn, again, to host the very cool Math Teachers at Play Blog Carnival. Fridays sometimes have a 50 Word Friday article with a special feature – exactly 50 words. I’m doing a variation of this – every sentence in this post has 15 words exactly. The requirement will be hard to meet, but I can do it with some effort! …

Go read the entire post at MathFour.com …