April showers have ushered in May flowers — and a second Math Calendar, with daily puzzles from my homeschool co-op students. Get your copy here:
Math Teachers at Play #5
[Photo by Alex Kehr.]
Welcome to the Math Teachers At Play blog carnival — which is not just for math teachers! If you like to learn new things and play around with ideas, you are sure to find something of interest. Let the mathematical fun begin…
Math Teachers at Play #2
[Photo by Sister72.]
Welcome to the second Math Teachers At Play blog carnival! Some articles were submitted by their authors, other were drawn from the back-log in my blog reader, and I’ve spiced it all up with a few of my favorite quotations.
Let the mathematical fun begin…
How Much is a Trillion?
[Photo by reubenaingber.]
If you collected stacks of $100 bills, could you fit a trillion dollars into your bedroom?
In your house?
In a warehouse?
If you spent a dollar a second, how long would it take to spend a trillion dollars?
[HT: Justin Taylor at Between Two Worlds.]
Math Teachers at Play #1
[Photo by StuSeeger.]
Welcome to the inaugural edition of the Math Teachers At Play blog carnival! I hope you enjoy this collection of tips, tidbits, games, and activities for students and teachers of preschool-12th grade mathematics.
For this first carnival, I’ve drawn several recent posts from my blog reader as examples of the types of posts I’d love to include in future editions of Math Teachers at Play. I tried to find something for everyone, from multiplication drill for elementary students to advice for understanding high school math equations.
Let the mathematical fun begin…
MathNotations Contest for Middle-High School
[Photo by ccarlstead.]
Can you can put together a team of 2-6 middle or high school students for an afternoon of mathematical play? If so, then Dave at MathNotations is running a math competition you just have to check out.
Teachers register by email on or before Thursday, January 29, and will receive the six thought-provoking contest problems and official answer form by return email. Hold the contest at your convenience on Tuesday, February 3, allowing your team up to 90 minutes to complete and electronically submit their answers.
Continue reading MathNotations Contest for Middle-High School
2009 Mathematics Game
[Photo by Amanda M Hatfield.]
Have you made a resolution to exercise your mental muscles this year? Then please join us for the 2009 Mathematics Game. Here are the rules:
Use the digits in the year 2009 and the operations +, -, x, ÷, sqrt (square root), ^ (raise to a power), and ! (factorial) — along with parentheses, brackets, or other grouping symbols — to write expressions for the counting numbers 1 through 100.
- All four digits must be used in each expression.
- Only the digits 2, 0, 0, 9 may be used.
- The decimal point may be used, as in .9, .02, etc.
- Multi-digit numbers such as 29 or 902 may be used, but preference is given to solutions that avoid them.
By definition: 
[See Dr. Math’s Why does 0 factorial equal 1?]
For this game we will accept: 
[See the Dr. Math FAQ 0 to the 0 power.]
Math History Tidbits: Agnesi, Euler, and China
I’ve fallen behind on my project of transcribing my Alexandria Jones stories. Finally, here are a few more tidbits from math history, along with links to relevant Internet sites and a few math puzzles for your students to try.
I hope you find them interesting.
Continue reading Math History Tidbits: Agnesi, Euler, and China
Visual Puzzle: What Is This?
[Photo by fdecomite.]
I stumbled across this cool project during a Creative Commons search at Flickr. Can you guess what it is?
Answers: Euclid’s Geometric Algebra
Remember the Math Adventurer’s Rule: Figure it out for yourself! Whenever I give a problem in an Alexandria Jones story, I will try to post the answer soon afterward. But don’t peek! If I tell you the answer, you miss out on the fun of solving the puzzle. So if you haven’t worked these problems yet, go back to the original post. Figure them out for yourself — and then check the answers just to prove that you got them right.
Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math 