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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
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That's very cool. While I'm not a big fan of teacher-as-entertainer, I do my best to keep class as, uh, non-boring as I can, and to demonstrate all of the nifty uses for what we've learned. A colleague and I put together a model incorporating forecasting, regression, optimization (linear programming), and simulation to predict the Super Bowl winner (it works pretty well, too), and showed it to the students. They loved it, and were much more enthusiastic about learning the math after that.
I agree with the teacher-as-entertainer thought. I feel that problem solving is always an applicable lesson. We don't usually get to other heuristics until January or so as the Singapore Primary Maths curriculum is so heavy on bar modeling.
This turned into a highly engaging introduction to using a chart or table to find a pattern.
What a neat class; I'm happy for you.
I've seen the puzzle before and I have a vague feeling that I figured it out at one point. But given my background in math and the fact that I don't know the answer immediately, I'd say it is hard.
My goal is to find a proof, not a pattern.
Well...this is interesting now isn't it? First of all, though I've read throught the posts on this blog, I am still a little confused as to why you are voicing your concerns about our schools on an internet blog. This seems not only a little immature to me but also ineffective for your own arguments. If so many of the middle school parents are so incredibly upset then you should probably bring it to a board meeting, school conference, or any other congregation at which all partiesinvolved are present (parents, faculty, and heck...why not the students for a change?)instead of on a website where no one in authority is going to give you a response. Confronting the problem in a place where you can actually have a productive dialogue seems like a better idea to me than complaining on an internet blog (which reads more like a burn-book)...but then again, what do I know? After all, I am just a product of Irvington public education, which might I add is, in my opinion, an extremley avid advocate of both critical thinking and logic, and a place that has pushed me to think, work, and be more than I ever thought possible.
Before you have a chance to point it out yourselves, I would like to acknowledge that I wrote "thought" instead of "though" accidentally and I also forgot a space between "parties" and "involved". Sorry! Now feel free to attack!
FYI, posting the same reply on multiple threads is usually considered a venial commenting sin. It makes replies hard to understand and arguments harder to follow.
I've replied to this comment on the other thread you replied to.
Not to mention that sometimes comments get buried in innocuous posts where no one will ever see them ;-)
Doug-
Awesome new vocabulary term!
Merriam Webster on line defines a venial sin as:
1 : a sin that is relatively slight or that is committed without full reflection or consent and so according to Thomist theology does not deprive the soul of sanctifying grace (as opposed to a mortal sin)
2 : a minor offense
I love this puzzle. It makes a nice party trick. Get two or more people (that you want to hit on) to write down the numbers, jumble, subtract, circle, and jumble again. You can obviously solve it in your head.
What's the rule? I've been on it for the last two hours! It's mind boggling! What's the mathmatical equation used?! I have to know!
How about a clue.
Define a number as:
A + B*10 + C*100 + D*1000
where A is the one's digit, B is the ten's digit, and so forth. Define another number and equation using A,B,C,D in a different order and subtract the two. Do you see anything interesting? What is unique about the difference?
Who says I don't like constructivism. Is my clue called scaffolding? No. It's just a clue. The better scaffolding is that you have to start defining variables and equations and let the math take you to the solution.
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