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Have you and your students enjoyed a project, game, or handout from my blog? If you would like to say "Thank you," then consider buying yourself that book you've been meaning to read...Welcome to the Carnival of Mathematics! We’ve got a full roster this time, including roller coasters, topological Turán theory, a mathematician arrested as a spy, a plane running out of fuel mid-flight, speed limits in Conway’s Game of Life, and much, much more…
The 59th Carnival of Mathematics features 59 blog posts (counting the multi-part posts and the carnival post itself) on a wide variety of interesting topics. Drop in and enjoy the browsing!
“Let’s give the governor a break,” says Williams College mathematician Edward Burger. “If nothing else, he’s encouraging math education.”
— Carl Bialik
Coincidental Obscenity Deemed Extremely Dubious
Check out the new math carnival to discover plenty of great fun for all ages:
Are you wondering where MTAP #18 went? Here’s the story (contest-winning entry from Lisa Downing), and we’re sticking to it!
“The Odds were at odds with the Evens. It never seemed fair to them that two Odds made an Even but two Evens didn’t make an Odd…”
[Click over to MTaP #19 to read more.]
[Graphite drawing by Niner.]
Niner (pronounced Neener), who takes the photos for my blog header — which reminds me, we’re about due for a new one of those… — has started a new blog. She calls it 19 & Still Alive, because “the world doesn’t end when you’re 16 if you don’t go to Prom or don’t get your driver’s license. (I never went to Prom, and I didn’t go through Driver’s ED until 17, but I’m alive, amazingly.)”
There won’t be any math there, or at least I don’t expect to see any; the blog will be mostly her rambling thoughts about whatever catches her interest. But she does have a wonderful graphite drawing based on the photo Masarwa man. On her blog, you can click the image to see him up close and personal. Wow!
[Photo by *Irish.]
In my post Pre-Algebra Problem Solving: The Tools, I introduced word algebra as a way to help students think their way through a story problem. In the next two posts, I showed how the tool worked with simple word problems.
Now, before I move on to focus exclusively on bar diagrams, I would like to show how word algebra can help a student solve a typical first-year algebra puzzle.
A homeschooling friend who avoided algebra in high school, trying to help her son cope with a subject she never understood, posted: “Help! Our answer is different from the book’s.” Here is the homework problem:
Josh earned $72 less than his sister who earned $93 more than her mom. If they earned a total of $504, how much did Josh earn?
Math Mama is hosting the next Math Teachers at Play blog carnival (submit your post here) on Friday, and she writes:
The Math Teachers at Play blog carnival came out twice as #15. Since then we’ve had #16 and #17. We’d like to iron out the numbering, and so the upcoming issue will be #19. I am personally sponsoring a contest for the best little (ie, very short) story written about how the numbers got mixed up this way…
For more details, check out her blog post:
Beginning next month, the MTaP carnival will change its schedule, coming out on the third Friday of every month.
If you are interested in hosting an upcoming carnival, please let me know! Carnival posts are a lot of fun to put together, you get to discover new (or new-to-you) bloggers, and you almost always get a bit of a traffic spike. And don’t worry if you’ve never hosted a blog carnival before — just ask for my very detailed “how to” email to help you get started.
[Bill Watterson identifies the trouble with math problems, through the eyes of Calvin and Hobbes.]
It’s time to revive and (hopefully!) finish my long-neglected series on solving word problems in elementary mathematics. I’ve been having fun making up the problems, so now I just have to write the posts. Coming up soon:
- 4th grade math in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
- 5th grade math in The Hobbit.
- 6th grade math in… I haven’t decided yet. Any suggestions?
Since it has been more than two years since the last entry, however, I wanted to take a few minutes to recap our progress so far and to refer new readers back to the original posts:
- Pre-Algebra Problem Solving: The Tools
An introduction to word algebra and bar diagrams. - Pre-Algebra Problem Solving: 2nd Grade
Math problems from Mr. Popper’s Penguins. - Pre-Algebra Problem Solving: 3rd Grade
Math Problems from Poor Richard.
Beginning in January, I will teach a 4th-12th grade Blogging 2 Learn class through our local homeschool co-op. For now, here is my research blog, testing ideas and trying to imagine myself as a new blogger:
Have you used blogs with your students? If so, I would love to hear your suggestions and comments. And whether you are an experienced or a wanna-be blogger, please share: What do you think a “Blogging to Learn” class should cover?
Check out the action-packed blog carnival at mathrecreation:
There is plenty of humor, a few movies, some great activities and explorations, and lots of math in Math Teachers at Play 17. Hope you enjoy reading these as much as I did….
I think this may be our longest edition yet, with plenty of mathematical fun for all ages. Enjoy!
Today’s Homeschool Freebie is an elementary math textbook from 1915:
The book covers the basic arithmetic from addition and subtraction to simple multiplication and division, with quite a bit of measuring and fraction work, too. The concepts are taught through stories, and then the teacher is to give the student plenty of hands-on experience with measurements. Each lesson concludes with a page of practice problems.
If you miss the daily freebie, you may still be able to get the book through Google (but I’m not sure this works if you are outside the United States):
All week long, CurrClick is offering a free “Make It Real Learning” math workbook:
The States by the Numbers series features 4th-6th grade “math adventures” about your favorite states (the freebie is Wisconsin). The workbook covers place values, rounding, estimation, fractions and percentages using data from the Census Bureau’s 2008 Statistical Abstract of the United States. The workbook includes basic instruction and 80 practice problems, plus several “What’s the big idea?” journal pages which ask learners to reflect on the things they’ve learned. You may want to let your students use a calculator, since real data often means large, unwieldy numbers.
The Math Teachers at Play blog carnival is a collection of tips, tidbits, games, and activities for students and teachers of preK-12 mathematics. If you write about learning or teaching math, we would love to have you join us. Just fill out the handy submission tool by Wednesday night (old posts are welcome, as long as they haven’t been published in past editions of this carnival), and then enjoy the mathy fun this Friday at MathRecreation.
Multiplication, division, trig, telling time, order of operations, negative numbers, infinity, and even more — it must be the Math Teachers at Play blog carnival! Check out the latest edition:
Enjoy!
