Math(s) Teachers At Play #75

Hello, and welcome to the 75th issue of the Math(s) Teachers at Play Blog Carvinal! For those of you who are unaware, a “blog carnival” is a periodic post that travels from blog to blog and has a collection of posts on a certain topic. This is one of two Maths Carnivals, the other being the Carnival of Mathematics, the current edition can be found here.

75, 75, 75 – What is there to say about the number 75? It is a nice round integer, forming three quarters of 100. It is the 4th “Ordered Bell Number“, and more impressively is a “Keith Number“.

It is the amount of uniform polyhedral that exist (when coinciding edges are excluded), it is the atomic number of rhenium, the age limit for Canadian senators and , perhaps most impressively, has only two distinct prime factors, and they are the two lowest odd primes!

This is the first time I’ve hosted a carnival and there were some excellent submissions. I enjoyed reading them all and have discovered some new blogs. I have also input some posts I’ve seen this month which I thought were excellent too.

On to the carnival:

First up, some posts aimed at those teaching maths to the little ones:

Crystal Wagner in this post discusses some ideas for teaching maths to those under 6. She urges us not to rush into formal academics programmes, but to spend more time exploring the subject.

This post from Pradeep Kumar discusses finger counting and suggests methods to help children move on from it.

Margo Gentile give us a nice little activity for those first learning their times tables.

Lisa Swaboda asks “Do vegetables have OCD?” – This is a nice post that looks at the symmetry in the world around us and asks philosophical questions about its nature.

Yelena at Mobius Noodles asks “What maths do you have in your house?” and tells us about the maths house she created at the mini maker faire.

For those a little older we have:

Sarah Hagan writes about an investigation she has complete with one of her classes, which looks at linear functions and asks “How many stacking cups would equal your teachers height?”

Dave Gale discusses percentages, and helps me feel sane by proving I’m not the only one who sees maths everywhere.

Here we have some ideas using modern technology:

Penny Ryder has written this piece about fractions, and how they can be explored using 21st century technology. Interesting stuff for those with access to iPads.

Bryan Anderson gives us a fantastic arty maths project that uses DESMOS.

For the more advanced mathematicians:

Manan Shah has given us another great post as part of his series on teaching calculus

Colin Beveridge gives us this nice post about arithmetic sequences

And I discuss a further maths lesson which degenerated into a lengthy exploration of Pythagorean Triples!

More Generally we have these on maths teaching:

In this post , my star post of the carnival, Christopher Danielson explores the purpose of posing mathematical questions, and gives us all food for thought on the way we question children.

This nice post from fMaths discusses marking in maths.

You can follow Craig Barton and his team as they voyage through the journey of writing a new Scheme of Work.

Also this month:

Festival Founder Denise Gaskins has written a post talking about the brand new book, Playing with Math edited by Sue Van Huttam!

There is a suberb episode of Wrong, but useful.

while one of the hosts, Colin Beveridge, tells us why he loves maths, and I join in the love in.

If anyone else has written, or would like to write, a post on why they love maths, I’d love to read them!