Comments on: Math Homework I Wish I Still Got

By: Michael

Michael — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 04:19:03 +0000

I used to give my students Sudoku (back when it was called Number Place), but when kids started finding apps that solved them automatically, I changed my puzzles.

Now I give students Strimko, Battleship, and Hexatrex puzzles, and if I could find more Sujiken puzzles, I’d give those out, too.

By: chris n

chris n — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 03:17:26 +0000

The 9th grade math teacher that is next to my classroom uses crossfigures all the time.

By: Fruppi

Fruppi — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 20:20:43 +0000

I hated regular math, but give me my 10th grade geometry notebook back (because I can’t remember all the theorems) and I will solve your proofs all day. I loved Geometry…part of it was a great teacher, but for some reason it just clicked in my brain and magically made sense.

By: Calli Arcale

Calli Arcale — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:12:15 +0000

My third-grade daughter is getting crossfigure assignments; she enjoys them very much! Her first step is always to go through them and deduce which problems she actually doesn’t need to solve because they are solved by the crossing problems. (Ones like “an odd number”, which is clearly too vague to be helpful, but is filled entirely with crossing solutions.)

By: Kerri :D

Kerri :D — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:04:56 +0000

I always loved the logic matrix problems. You know, the ones that say “Sally, John, Annie, and Bob all have ice cream cones of chocolate, strawberry, vanilla, and mint…” and then you get clues to try to figure out who had what. I would always do extra of those when they were assigned.

Otherwise, when it came to the actual numbers–I hated math.

By: Robert

Robert — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 22:59:22 +0000

Check Project Eureka (http://projecteureka.org/problem) out, you can always find some interesting problems there. That’s what I do when I feel the need for a brain gym’n'tonic.

By: MyMathGenius

MyMathGenius — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 06:49:31 +0000

Its sad that not many people take math as an enjoyable activity anymore….:(

By: Michael

Michael — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 18:52:00 +0000

I love puzzles in general, but some are my Achilles’ Heel. Balance problems are one such type; diagramless crosswords are another.

By: merops

merops — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 05:30:00 +0000

Volume of a tank? Who cares about that? Calculus for me was *central* in HS. It was everything earlier mathematics was building up to. It described nature: it allowed you to calculate rates of change, distance travelled with variable v, etc, etc. The universe in simple mathematical rules!

By: kelly

kelly — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 02:35:00 +0000

i completely agree with the calculus! really, when WOULD you need to find the volume of an oddly-shaped tank that is being drained and filled at the same time? especially when you could just put some kind of electronic monitor in it. i really didn’t like calculus.