Image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons The aptly named website, “Visual Fractions,” shows fraction concepts and operations the way I teach them – from a visual basis. Although it is standard for math curricula to introduce fractions visually, most of them drop the visualization too early. Worse, when many children are just starting to grasp these […]
Sep 17 2015
New Osmo Game
Osmo®, the educational game platform that incorporates actual, hands-on pieces while giving software-based feedback and enhancements, has a new game for teaching basic math concepts and operations, called “Numbers.” As I mentioned in a previous post, Osmo uses the camera on an iPad to “see” which game pieces the player(s) have put in front of […]
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Sep 16 2014
Cash Gifting Systems Exploit Math Illiteracy
Math-phobic children often grow up to be math-phobic adults. Math-phobic adults are sometimes exploited for their money, even if they do not have much of it. Although Spark a Playful Mind is mostly about children and learning, I want discuss one of the many “get-rich-quick” schemes my friend recently introduced me to, because it shows […]
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Sep 16 2014
A Simplistic Mathematical Model of a Cash Gifting System
Introduction A gifting system, in its purist form, sells no goods or services, but promises to make you money through the people you recruit to sign up. Below is a simple mathematical model showing how, in principle, such a system cannot go on forever. There will always be people who lose money. On the other […]
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