by MathPickle | Feb 17, 2017 |
Pollinator puzzles help students with multiplication, division and problem solving. I often emphasize the nasty stinger on the bee to recalcitrant boys just to engage them viscerally 😉 Forgive me! lol The class starts by collectively solving a puzzle. Here they must...
by MathPickle | Feb 6, 2017 |
The crow took pebbles and dropped them into an urn so that the water level rose until the crow could drink. What a smart crow! That’s as much as Aesop wrote, but afterwards he witnessed a peculiar algorithm that the crow devised… The crow started with a...
by MathPickle | Jan 17, 2017 |
Skinny Man Tango starts with a shape and then changes it to another shape based on three simple rules. The results can be as beautiful as watching tango. To explain the rules I’ll start with this shape. Replacement Rule: Each edge of your shape must be replaced...
by MathPickle | Jan 16, 2017 |
Is this Venn-like diagram a good fit for Reptile, Crocodile, Female? Does this make sense? No – it suggests that some Crocodiles are not Reptiles. WRONG. It also suggests that all Crocodiles are Females. WRONG. Fix it… This works. Some Crocodiles and...
by MathPickle | Jan 11, 2017 |
King Kong rearranges the city skyline. The skyscrapers create interesting patterns even though they are generated by a simple algorithm. Let’s look at an example if he starts with 5:2 skyscrapers. The algorithm: King Kong removes the top floor from every...