The Math Education Blog
In a previous post, I described two different approaches to solving the Burning Tent optimization problem. Now I’d like to offer a related problem that I assigned many years ago to my pre-service mathematics teachers at New York University. A cowgirl wants to give her horse some food and water before returning to her tent....
NCTM’s Virtual 2021 Annual Meeting ran from April 21 through May 1, and in Session 299 Daniel Scher, Karen Hollebrands, and I presented an on-demand video workshop to introduce Web Sketchpad (WSP). Even if you weren’t able to attend the conference, you can still take advantage of this workshop, and we will be glad to...
How can you identify a lover of math? Casually mention a burning tent and notice if her first thought is how to minimize her path to a river and then to the tent to douse the flames. Here is a full statement of this classic geometry problem: Ah, the great outdoors. Camping, the fresh air,...
In a 2018 blog post, I presented George Gamow’s pirate treasure problem, which can neatly be solved by capitalizing on the geometry of complex numbers. There’s more treasure to be had, however, so get ready for another adventure! An island contains a giant boulder, a lighthouse, a cave, and a jail. Among a pirate’s belongings,...
A game of enclosing sheep and wolves in fences helps children to develop their conceptual understanding of polygons.
With a few adjustments, we can make the Hundred Chart more intuitive and more useful for students. This post explains why the improvements are needed and describes how students can build a physical model that more accurately corresponds to the number system.
Of all the original games I’ve designed, Arranging Addends is among my favorites. On page 1 of the Web Sketchpad model below (and here), you’re given five addends—1, 2, 4, 8, and 16—and asked to arrange them in the circles so that the sum of the numbers in each circle matches the values in the...
I’m a big fan of pan-balance puzzles in which you’re given a two-pan balance and asked to use it to uncover a counterfeit coin or determine the weight of a coin. One classic example is the following puzzle: You have 12 coins that all look exactly the same. One is counterfeit and is either heavier...
In last month’s Construct a Building post, I presented any array model in which students construct the rooms and floors of a building as a way of representing multiplication. Now I’d like to follow up with a similar array model that allows students to take a problem they don’t know, like 8 × 7, and break...
When Scott Steketee and I developed activities for the Dynamic Number project, we thought about ways that dynamic array models could help children to conceptualize multiplication. Rather than presenting children with arrays that were fully formed, we thought it would be instructive for them to build these arrays themselves. That design goal led to the...