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...
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...
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