A Kindergarten Activity As a Problem for Adolescents
Twelve kids stand in a circle, a kid per one of twelve marked spots. Every now and then one moves clockwise, another counterclockwise to an adjacent position (which may be occupied by more than one kid...
View ArticleDominoes and Chessboard Activities
Tiling a chessboard with dominoes is uniquely suitable as an entertaining and edifying activity even for young children. Both implements are widely available, while experimentation with them leads to a...
View ArticleA Property of the Power of 5
My late father was an inveterate human calculator. During the 1930s at the height of the New Economic Policy (NEP) that allowed a degree of post-revolution entrepreneurship in the Soviet Union, he made...
View ArticleElementary Problems that Beg for Generalization
In a well known puzzle, a father willed to his three sons camels, with the proviso that of the inheritance should go to the oldest among them, with being due to the middle one and to the youngest....
View ArticleKordemsky's Palindrome Problem
In his last book Mathematical Allurments (Matematicheskie Zavlekalki), published posthumously in 2000, he tells a story of a 7th grade girl who got tempted to solve that problem and found a solution,...
View ArticleWhy Learn Mental Math Tricks?
I strongly believe that those tricks are more than anything else convey to the early learners the essence of practicing mathematics. Presh Talwalkar's book may also open the eyes of an older generation...
View ArticleA Problem in Complex Numbers Sets 3 Aside
Let \(a,b\) be complex numbers that satisfy \(\displaystyle\frac{a}{b}+\frac{b}{a}+1=0.\) Find the value of the expression \(\displaystyle\frac{a^{2016}}{b^{2016}}+\frac{b^{2016}}{a^{2016}}+1.\) The...
View Article7 or 22
Without ever trying to answer such questions, I was always confident that the poster (if not the author) were smugly awaiting a definite reply, although, even with the most benevolent interpretation,...
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