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Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Any math-heads want to join?
Okay I don't necessarily mean you PhD's, although you're certainly welcome. I really mean you moms trying to get your brains wrapped around math again.
I'm challenging myself by taking last year's seventh grade Bergen Academies Math Competition test. It's a timed test that runs 90 minutes, but later for the timed part. I just want to get through the test.
Here's the blog entry, which also links to the test that you can print and take. Anybody game?
Clueless Mom Challenges Herself
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8 comments:
Of course, I'm also supposed to be doing a proof Barry sent me.
And, um....writing a book.
OOPS
I just noticed: COMPETITION
yikes
I'm in too, but just for practice (competition--who am I kidding?)and because it's a good idea that I make sure I can do them before I expect my 9 year old to. I actually printed them out a couple of days ago...
I don't have a good excuse not to as I'm not writing a book or working on a proof, so let's go!
Looked at the 2006 8th-grade test.
It looks good, roughly the level of Saxon Algebra 1. For a reasonably math-philic kid, this is a fair test.
It wasn't a proof, per se; it was a word problem. Though there are some who would say all algebra problems are proofs. But let's not go there. It was a word problem. And I'll give you an extra week.
Great! Here's the blog entry again: Clueless Mom challenges herself.
I thought we could use the comment thread there. I already have a comment posted concerning question number 23.
You can subscribe to my Clueless Mom blog.
This post belongs on the other blog, but Google is evil, and anon comments just got turned off.
On the birds question, Anonymous @ 5:28 PM is correct. The number of blue male birds can be anywhere between 5 and 15. The problem's solution assumes, but the problem does not state, that all birds must be either blue or male (or both), and thus neglects to factor in the non-blue female birds.
Assuming that sex is binary (all birds are either male or female) and, for ease of typing, that all not-blue birds are red:
There are 40 birds. Exactly 30 are blue, so exactly 10 are not-blue (red). Exactly 15 are male, so exactly 25 are female.
This could be:
25 blue female
5 blue male
10 red male
or:
15 blue female
15 blue male
10 red female
or something in between.
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