A classic problem we’ve seen hundreds of times involves students opening and closing lockers. I have often told people that, believe it or not, they could find the answer by searching the Ask Dr. Math site for the word “locker”. But I prefer to give them a reference to one of the answers in which …
Last time we looked at the classic puzzle of magic squares. Many questions we get are about similar kinds of puzzles, and here I want to look at “magic polygons” (triangles, squares, pentagons) in which, unlike the traditional magic squares, only the edges count. These are a common subject of elementary-level questions.
I’m looking at various common puzzles, and ways to think about them logically. Today, we’ll examine basic magic squares: not the standardized methods you can look up, but how a kid can work them out when seeing them for the first time. Often they are not even told they have a name, so there is …
Here is another puzzle we have received and answered many times. (I count 7 that have been archived.) It has several variations, which make it even more interesting. The story varies, too; sometimes the monkeys are the stars, other times they just get the leftovers. Someone could to an interesting folklore study on this one.
We often compare math problems to puzzles; and some puzzles are math problems. I want to devote a couple posts to interesting puzzles that can be attacked in various ways. Here, we are given the weights of every possible pair of hay bales, and have to work out the individual weights. This classic can be …
As a penultimate post in this series on problems that trigger a lot of doubt or opposition, we’ll look at one that is usually asked just as a “How do you do this?” question, but occasionally gets responses from people who argue for alternative interpretations. Our FAQ is at Three Houses, Three Utilities, which explains …
(A new question of the week) Having just discussed some pattern or sequence problems that were poorly posed, let’s look at some recent questions about sequences, some of which are quite complicated, and others seem to be just wrong.
We’ve often pointed out that pattern or sequence problems, when nothing is given but a list of numbers, are not really math, in the sense that there is no one correct answer. They are psychology questions: What would a math teacher think is an interesting sequence to ask about? Mathematically, any number could come next, …
In the past (last May and November), we discussed ways to find patterns or sequences in numbers, sometimes leading to a formula. This included an example where the sequence turned out not to be just a provided list of numbers, but a process that generated the numbers. I want to focus on that type of …
Back in May, I wrote about pattern and sequence puzzles, and didn’t have the space to cover all that I would have liked. It’s time to revisit the topic, looking at a couple different types of sequences, and then the “input/output” or “function” puzzles that add an extra twist to the idea.