No WUG is too DAX to be ZONGED

Another fabulous grammar puzzle from Language Log:

No WUG is too DAX to be ZONGED.

Does this sentence say that a WUG should be ZONGED?

Or that a WUG should not be ZONGED?

And why haven't I been reading Language Log for lo these many years?

6 in 10 people get this one right.

pop quiz, part 5

How many people do you think answer this question from the Wason test correctly:

[Four] cards are placed on a table to show 3, 8, red and brown....The rule is: “If a card shows an even number on one side, then it is red on the other.” Which cards do you need to turn over to tell if the rule has been broken?

And how many people would you expect to get the answer right on this one:

“If you borrow the car, then you have to fill the tank with petrol.” Once again, you are shown four cards, one side of which says who did or did not borrow the car and the other whether or not that person filled the tank:

Dave did not borrow the car
Helen borrowed the car
Brianne filled up the tank with petrol
Kirk did not fill up the tank with petrol

Does learning math make you more likely to know the answer?

Or, alternatively, does being able to answer these questions make it easier for you to learn math?

I'll put the percent-correct in the comments.

Here is Language Log on the Wason test. (Haven't read yet.)

On the liberal arts

"The utilitarian or servile arts enable one to be a servant-- of another person, of the state, of a corporation, or of a business-- and to earn a living. The liberal arts, in contrast, teach one how to live; they train the faculties and bring them to perfection; they enable a person to rise above his material environment to live an intellectual, a rational, and therefore a free life in gaining truth."

Sister Miriam Joseph, C.S.C., Ph.D.

The Trivium

The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric
Understanding the Nature and Function of Language

Left-Brained Epiphanies

Our blogging colleague, Out in Left Field (who posts here as Lefty) is asking a question: Are all epiphanies right-brained? In other words, the common story is "introverted, scholarly type learns to embrace extroversion, play, and lack of structure."

Lefty is looking for stories of left-brain epiphanies:

How often, for example, does an outgoing musician learn that what makes him truly happy is retreating to his study to analyze business cycles and market equilibria?

Go and contribute your stories.

Some prompts:

Left-brain: logical, systematic, analytical, one-at-a-time, abstract, verbal, introverted.

Right-brain: emotional, incidental, intuitive, holistic, relational, nonverbal, social.

Reminder: don't post your stories here, go over to Out in Left Field

Fido Puzzle - Solved by Third Graders

I think I've mentioned before that I teach a high ability math group at a charter school in Phoenix. Long division took less than 2 weeks to master and we're finishing up the Primary Math 3a book this week, well ahead of my predicted schedule.

Math has always come easy to this group, and I've been working challenging word problems and logic stumpers with them. Last week, I saw a post on Thoughts on Teaching about the Fido Mind Reader on the 7up website.

I showed the site to my students, who ooohed & aaahed over it, then told them I thought that they could try to out figure how it works. We discussed methods of problem solving and I told them we would try a chart or table. The worksheet provided plenty of subtraction review. Of course, one of them found the pattern that makes the puzzle work.

Conferences and report cards went home this week so I must confess, I didn't try to figure the puzzle out before I assigned it. Working the pattern on the board with the students, I saw immediately that the student's answer was correct.

Could any KTM readers tell me how a big a challenge this puzzle presents?

Check out my excited students on our classroom blog:

Brainbusters

mother lode

worksheets: arithmetic through calculus

yowza!

Now I can spend the rest of the night downloading stuff onto my desktop instead of revising my chapter.

two birds, one stone

math isn't just math

To my last update, where I said:

He just doesn't understand why he should write "Let x equal the number of pears" at the top of the problem. I didn't either when I was his age, but I did it because I had no choice (that's the way math was taught back then). Now, I understand why, and that's why I'm passing it on to him.

Catherine responded:

What is the reason?!

It seems like a good thing to do, but that's all I know.

Because math isn't the only reason to learn math. We benefit at least as much from the sequential, linear, logical thought process, because we can apply it to nearly every facet of our lives, and not just the quantitative ones.

The traditional formalism of math is the embodiment of that process. By llearning it, and being forced to reproduce it every time we do a problem, we learn the process itself, of breaking a problem into its component parts, and creating a step by step solution, where each step follows from the previous steps.

It's discipline for the mind.

This is one of my major objections to "fuzzy" math, that students never learn this logical process.