I had what feels like a great idea this morning. If I were to pursue a career in writing/comedy, I would create a show with the tone and feel of "Scrubs" except instead of being set in a hospital and following the lives of first year doctors it would be set in a high school and follow the lives of first year teachers. Believe me, there is a gold mine of material here. I seem to recall a few shows over the years attempt to follow the lives of teachers (Boston Public being a notable and sad example) but I don't remember any that were... you know.... good. The key difference that I see between Scrubs and my show is that in Scrubs the bulk of the adult characters' time is spent with colleagues, and they service clients (patients) almost as an afterthought. To be in any way realistic, the characters on my show would have to do the exact opposite. The vast bulk of their time would be spent with the clients (students) and they would get to interact with colleagues during only brief stints in between classes or after school.

I am a giant nerd

So I'm sitting at home on a Saturday night -- catching up on the ol' Tivo backlog -- and Molly and I ended up watching a little Jeopardy mini-marathon. I found myself pondering a question that I've often pondered on long car rides, in the dentist's waiting room, and at various times in the bathroom: How much could a person theoretically win in a single game of Jeopardy? Well tonight I had not only the free mental energy, I also had a calculator handy on my cell phone. When I announced the result to Molly, she was skeptical. The theoretical amount you could win is well out of range of what anyone has ever won. Long story short, I ended up making a spreadsheet to represent all the categories and values and daily doubles. I have attached a screenshot so you can see what I mean:




This got me thinking about that age-old student to teacher question: when am I ever going to use this? I'm gradually settling in on an answer: I don't know! I have no idea what problems you might be interested in solving! This problem doesn't involve anything more than simple arithmetic, it just makes you do that arithmetic in a deliberate, planned way. This is why I'm sure that if I gave my students this problem, they would look at it for a second (literally) and then throw their hands up in the air. In my experience they know how to solve single-step problems, the issue comes when they have to plan the solution. The attention spans are so short that even if they may honestly be curious about the original question they get bored with the solution. I think a good goal for the year may be to give them not obviously-math puzzles that require multiple steps, just to teach them to think more than one step ahead. Now I just need to find some not obviously-math puzzles...