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Happy Square Root Day!

April 4th, 2016 by MathMaverick
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“Square Root Day? What’s that? That was my response last week when a student in my Calc class mentioned that Monday 4/4/16 was Square Root Day. Up until that time, I had never heard of Square Root Day. My student proceeded to inform me that Square Root Day’s occur when both the day of the […]

Happy PI Day!

March 14th, 2016 by MathMaverick
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It’s that time of year again – March 14th – that’s right, it’s PI DAY! PI is an irrational number. No, that doesn’t mean it’s unreasonable.  It means it’s not rational – that is PI can not be represented as a ratio of two integers. In other words, PI can not be represented as a […]

Shoelaces

January 10th, 2016 by MathMaverick
"There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else" - James Thurber

Although it was an easy two hour trip, I rarely visited New York City. However, each time I did, I found it more and more interesting. I too have found that “interesting” is an interesting word, but that’s another story. In any case, it had been years since my last visit. This year my wife […]

Holiday Puzzle 2015 #15 – More Missing Words

December 15th, 2015 by MathMaverick
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 It’s Tuesday, so here are some more Missing Word puzzles.  Today there are ten puzzles of varying difficulty. As a refresher in each puzzle, a word or words are missing, replaced by their first letter.  In order to solve each puzzle, you need to find the missing words.  Here’s an example of how they work: Puzzle1:       […]

Holiday Puzzle 2015 #14 – Associative Riddles

December 14th, 2015 by MathMaverick
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Today’s puzzle is another set of fun riddles called Associative Riddles.  Associative riddles look for how two ideas are associated.  This association is often with a word they have in common.  For example, carpet and carport  have “car” in common.  Making an associate riddle, one may ask “what do a rug and a garage have in […]

Holiday Puzzle 2015 #13 – Number Junctions

December 13th, 2015 by MathMaverick
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Today’s puzzle is another original puzzle called Number Junctions. I originally named these puzzles Octangles as they contained a collection of octagons. However, when Mindware published them in book form (actually two books), they changed the format to circles and subsequently the name. Number Junctions are easy to understand – all you need to do […]

Holiday Puzzle 2015 #12 – Counting Triangles

December 12th, 2015 by MathMaverick
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Today’s puzzle is another Counting Shapes (like day 2 of this years Holiday Puzzles).  As with many puzzles, the concept of Counting Shapes puzzles is very straight-forward and getting an answer is very easy, but getting the correct answer is a bit more challenging. In today’s puzzles, you will be presented with a collection of triangles. All you […]

Holiday Puzzle 2015 #11 – Number Circuits

December 11th, 2015 by MathMaverick
NumberCircles

Today’s puzzle is another original puzzle called Number Circuits.  I originally named these puzzles Magic Puzzles as they are based on Magic Squares.  However, when Mindware published them in book form (acually two books), they changed the name.  Number Circuits are easy to understand – all you need to do is to place the given […]

Holiday Puzzle 2015 #10 – Snowflake Puzzles

December 10th, 2015 by MathMaverick
"Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand and melting like a snowflake." - Francis Bacon

Today’s puzzle is called a Snowflake Puzzle.  This is an extension of the Kuruko Puzzles that I created. Like Kurulko puzzles, they are similar to Sudoku puzzles.  I call them Snowflake puzzles because of their shape.  Snowflakes are symmetric shapes with six points.   The Snowflake puzzle follows this design.  It is comprised of 42 hexagons (six sided shapes).  […]

Holiday Puzzle 2015 #9 – Letter Riddles

December 9th, 2015 by MathMaverick
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Today’s puzzle is fun for everyone – Letter Riddles.  I came up with these riddles years ago while sitting at a restaurant with my family while waiting for the meal.  I was challenging my oldest daughter with these and in return she came up with a couple to challenge me! The idea is really simple – […]