[Photo by rdesai.]
The MIT Mathmen got the ball on their own 20-yard line for the last drive of the game. They were down by 2 points, so they needed at least a field goal to win the game.
If quarterback Zeno and his offense advanced the ball halfway to the opposing team’s end zone on each play…
For the rest of NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month), my other blog is featuring a logic game or puzzle every day. So far, I’ve shared three of my online favorites:
And there’s plenty more fun to come. Drop in every day until December to see a new puzzle or game:
Chess is a favorite game for recreational mathematicians — not to play it, but to play around with it. Many puzzles and challenges are based on the moves of chess pieces.
Stretch your brain with these puzzles:
[Photo by pfala.]
Thanks to John Cook’s article about factorials in the recent Mathematics and Multimedia Carnival, we’re adding new rules to the 2010 Mathematics Game.
Let’s play with multifactorials!
Symbolic Logic Part I was published in 1896. When Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) died two years later, Part II was lost. Because they couldn’t find the manuscript, many people doubted that he ever wrote Part II. But almost eighty years after his death, portions of Part II were recovered and finally published. The following puzzles are from the combined volume, Lewis Carroll’s Symbolic Logic, edited by William Warren Bartley, III.
These puzzles are called soriteses or polysyllogisms. Carroll began with a series of “if this, then that” statements. He rewrote them to make them more confusing, and then he mixed up the order to create a challenging puzzle.
Given each set of premises, what conclusion can you reach?
Uncle Will drove in from the tree farm to drop off Alex’s cousin, Sam, so he could go to the Homeschool Math Carnival.
“Hey, Sam,” Alex said. “What’s in the sack?”
Sam smiled. “A secret puzzle.”
“Aw, c’mon,” Leon whined. “We’ll be busy with our own games at the carnival. Can’t you show us now?”
As I was preparing for Wednesday’s Homeschool Math Club Games & Activities meeting, I remembered my old math calendars and thought, that would be a fun activity to offer. So I pulled up the files and discovered that the days of the week matched perfectly. What a cool coincidence!
So in case you missed the math calendars last year, or in case it’s been long enough that your children have forgotten, here are the “new” versions:
Umm Ahmad created an easier version for young students:
[Photo by MontyPython.]
You can get a good argument going in almost any group of people with the infamous Monty Hall problem:
Imagine you are on a TV game show, and the host lets you choose between three closed doors. One of the doors hides a fancy sports car, and if you pick that door, you win the car.
You pick door #1.
The host opens door #3 to reveal a goat. Then he gives you a chance to switch your door for the unopened door #2.
Should you switch?
What if you say you’re going to switch, and then the host offers to give you $5,000 instead of whatever is behind door #2?
Try the game for yourself at the Stay or Switch website.
Continue reading How to Start an Argument: The Monty Hall Problem
[Photo by Arwen Abendstern.]
If a girl and a half
can read a book and a half
in a day and a half,
then how many books can one girl read in the month of June?
Kitten reads voraciously, but she decided to skip our library’s summer reading program this year. The Border’s Double-Dog Dare Program was a lot less hassle and had a better prize: a free book! Of course, it didn’t take her all summer to finish 10 books.
How fast does Kitten read?
The carnival is up at Ramblings of a Math Mom, a day late but well worth the wait:
Mathmom herself wrote a wonderful post for the carnival, which I was glad to see. I’ve missed her!
Here’s a puzzle I found to fritter away time while I was waiting for the carnival:
[Warning: The answers are in the same blog post, so don’t scroll down until you’ve tried the puzzle!]
Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math 