How many ways can Jeff, Jeannette, Joy, and Jackie share 7 chocolate chip cookies? Each person should get at least one cookie.
For example:
Jeff ••
Jeannette •••
Joy •
Jackie •
Jeannette •••
Joy •
Jackie •
Problem 7: Sharing Cookies
Problem 6: Tetrahedral Numbers
A tetrahedron (triangular pyramid) is made by piling up four layers of tennis balls.
How many tennis balls are used in all?
Problem 5: Summing Rectangles
What is the sum of 4×1 + 3×2 + 2×3 + 1×4?
Problem 4: Summing Triangular Numbers
What is the sum of the first 4 triangular numbers?
Problem 3: Walking to the Playground
How many ways can Pascal walk from home to the playground, walking 6 blocks?
Problem 2: Triangles in a Hexagon
In hexagon ABCDEF, how many triangles can be formed by connecting three vertices?
Example ∆BCE.
Problem 1: Jelly Beans
Bertie has six jelly beans left: one each of Avocado, Buttermilk, Centipede, Dirt, Earwax and Fried Beans flavors. Harry reaches into the bag and takes out three jelly beans.
What possible groups of three jelly beans could Harry take? For example, Harry might take the Buttermilk, Dirt and Earwax jelly beans.
Math Circle Poster and Activity Session
The Bard Math Circle is traveling to Boston next week for the Math Circle Poster and Activity Session at the Joint Math Meeting 2012. This poster session brings together math circles from around the country to share some of their math circle activities.
Our activity Six Choose Three was used in our Spring 2011 circles, and features several problems that are surprisingly related. We invite you to share your solutions and comments in later posts.
The Reel Math Challenge
One of the Bard Math Circle parents sent us this link: The Reel Math Challenge, which is a contest sponsored by MATHCOUNTS. For those who don’t know, MATHCOUNTS is a national, middle school level math competition that promotes excellence in math education through problem-solving. More on that later.
The Reel Math Challenge is a team competition, and the goal is to make the best teaching video that explains a solution to one of the 270 problems in the MATHCOUNTS School Handbook. Each team consists of 4 student Team Members and 1 Team Advisor (an adult).
Interested? This could be a great Bard Math Circle activity, but time is running out. Send a friendly email to bardmathcircle@gmail.com if you’d like to volunteer to be a Team Advisor, and we’ll try to connect you with a team.
Now, more about excellence in math education through problem-solving. Each month we offer an engaging sheet of math problems. Math competitions such as
- Purple Comet (purplecomet.org)
- MOEMS (moems.org)
- MATHCOUNTS (www.mathcounts.org)
- Math Meets (www.mathmeets.com)
- AMC8 (amc.maa.org/amc8/)
all publish similar problems. While the Bard Math Circle is not about competition, we value problem-solving as an entry way into learning mathematics. The Reel Math Challenge is one of the fun ways to solving problems in a math circle environment.