Math etc.

Information for people, especially kids, interested in mathematics. We focus on things that promote participation and creativity.

by Clayton, Owen, and Rosalind Lewis

Here is an online book we’ve written about how to make up your own math mind reading tricks. Our goal is to go beyond one-time tricks, things you do just by following instructions, to understanding the math behind the tricks so that you can create your own.

Remember your chemistry set? If you’re like most people, you just did what the instructions told you, and learned little on the way. We think a chemistry set should guide you into creating your own chemical magic, so that you have understanding you can build on.

Comments to clayton@cs.colorado.edu are welcome (though Clayton is a notoriously slothful email correspondent).

We used to have a storefront pointing you to interesting stuff that’s for sale on the Web via Affinia. It featured the works of our heroes, Martin Gardner and Raymond Smullyan, puzzles from Binary Arts that we’ve found worthwhile, Zometool geometric construction sets, and other things we’ve used and enjoyed. But Affinia is no more! We’ll try to provide links directly to vendors for these items, when we get the time.

In selecting these items we’re again emphasizing real participation. The difference between Gardner and Smullyan and plenty of other authors is that they bring you in as a doer, not just a consumer. Some math popularizers want you to realize how smart mathematicians are and how great mathematics is, without worrying about whether they are drawing you in or pushing you out.

Other resources that support active participation in math, sometimes rising to real creativity, are:

Hypergami, a CAD system for paper sculpture. You design assemblages of polyhedra, decorate them, print out a folding net automatically, cut out, paste up, and have in your hand what you imagined. Created by Ann and Mike Eisenberg.

Agentsheets is a visual programming environment that kids can use to create amazing software, starting with a basic cellular automaton framework but going way on from there. Created by Alex Repenning.

Stagecast Creator is similar in intent and capability to Agentsheets. Try them both and see which works better for you. We’ve contributed something called the Mirror Game to the Creator site, and included some notes about some interesting math questions that it raises. By Allen Cypher, Dave Smith, and others.

Aristoplay has a line of educational games, including Tic Tac Twice, invented by our friend Andrzej Ehrenfeucht. Unfortunately the packaging doesn’t explain the math behind the game. The game is quite absorbing without it, though.

Mixmath is an entertaining Scrabble-like game using arithmetic. Not many games that focus on arithmetic are fun, but this one is. Haven’t found it on the Web, though it’s by Wrebbit, the Puzz 3D people, and should be widely distributed.

Robert Abbott is another favorite author. At www.logicmazes.com you can read about his work on mazes that involve intricate reasoning, not just path tracing, and purchase his out-of-print Mad Mazes (one of the books the kids and I keep coming back to) and Abbott’s New Card Games, a classic.