CTK Insights

Breaking chocolate bars is one of my most favorite activities. Assume you have a chocolate bar consisting, as usual, of a number of squares arranged in a rectangular pattern. Your task is to split the bar into small squares (always breaking along the lines between the squares) with a minimum number of breaks. How many [...]

For Day 4 of the break, I shall present 4 games that may at first appear rather unrelated; this is the purpose of the activity to discover the commonality between the four. All four are two-players games, with the players moving in turns. The Fish Soup game For the game you should prepare 9 cards [...]

Counting a group of objects can be done in many different ways. The most fundamental idea is that counting is at all possible in the sense that, regardless of the manner in which it is performed, the result is always the same. For example, place random numbers in a rectangular array and then compute separately [...]

An engaging activity has been described by Martin Gardner in his Mathematical Games column in Scientific American, v 201, No 6, Dec 1959 and later included in one of his collections, New Mathematical Diversions. Rather recently, an upgraded variant has emerged as the Japanese ladders game. Amazingly, neither Gardner has mentioned the Japanese sources in [...]

Mathematics is certainly not (only) about counting, graphing and solving equations. I do not believe that every child can reach beyond those. I do not believe that a child who does not show an inclination to dig deeper into math mysteries lacks in intellect or creativity. I do think that it is worth trying to [...]

An interesting problems has been offered at the 1993-1994 Saint Petersburg Regional Mathematical Olympiad, grade 9. Ten chips are placed on the main diagonal of a 10×10 chessboard, one chip per a square. A move consists in selecting two chips and moving each - if possible for both - to the next square below its [...]

Proofs Without Words is a great educational device that helps students understand and teachers convey mathematical facts. Professor Roger Nelson of Lewis & Clark College has a special knack for the PWW; a rare issue of Mathematics Magazine comes out without one if his creations. The latest (June 2011) is no exception. What do you [...]