Petals Around the Rose

I was wandering through the lust forest of mathematics blogs when I came upon Math at SBHS hosting of the Carnival of Maths.  Here they featured a game called Petals Around the Rose.  Without a good explanation on the page they sent you to, they did reference another article about the puzzle which is lovely.

The game involves rolling 5 dice and giving a numerical value to a given dice roll.  Now I have only spent about 15 minutes give or take pondering the algorithm to this puzzle, and I have no idea what the method is.  Apparently this puzzle is a fantastic test of intellegence.  The intellegent folks take the longest.  Give it a shot.  If you can’t waste a quarter hour trying to solve this cute puzzle, then I’m very very impressed!

Is Sudoku Math?

InkBall

When does something get the intimidating and profound title of “mathematics”?  Does it have to be an obscure piece of formula learned in school- like the quadratic formula- to be math?  Or can math include everything from calculus to InkBall?  Perhaps 2+2 = 4 is arithmetic and not mathematics at all.  Is logic math or is math logic?

I am a firm believer that Sudoku is math.  I guess this assessment is based on how I define “mathematics”.  Before I get any further, I want to point out that I am answering this as a mathematician would.  In math, we strongly rely on how we define our nouns.  We are completely comfortable changing a definition and developing different results.  In fact, we enjoy it immensely.  And I suspect, if you are a mathematician reading this, you will already have a definition of mathematics in your head.  So here is my working definition: mathematics is the process of analytical problem solving within a given set of rules. By this definition, Sudoku is mathematics.

Sudoku without numbers

But that may not be good logic for the rest of the world.  Sudoku is a logic game.  It should be recognized that we could play the exact same game with 9 different symbols (stars, smiley faces, carrots, whatever) as we do with the numbers 1-9.  It is not the numerals that make Sudoku math.  Every mathematician can play Sudoku well, even if they don’t like the game.  We can think logically and can say “if this and this, then that” without batting an eye.  Math and logic are very closely related.  Sudoku requires a certain organized thinking that is prominent in mathematics.

All you people who are running around proclaiming that Sudoku isn’t math should be ashamed of yourselves!  This is a popular game that everyone is playing.  Call it math!  Even if you don’t believe it to be!  Then I hope people will say, “gasp!  This fun game is math?  Maybe mathematics isn’t so intimidating as I thought.”  This would be the first step to shedding math’s terrible reputation.

Free Rice

Denis over at Let’s Play Math reminded me of a great site called Free Rice. Free Rice is a site developed in 2007 by John Breen which was later donated to the UN World Program.  They are also partnered with Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, who have a great mission statement to teach via the internet instead of just entertain. (though you can’t really say no to Hulu…)   Free Rice gives ten grains of rice per correct answer to someone who needs the rice more than you need to be procrastinating by playing.

FreeRice.com

When I first learned about this site they only asked vocabulary questions.  Now they have added arithmetic to the free rice earning!  You need only click on the “Subjects” tab on the top of the page to choose between basic math and multiplication table.  This is a fantastic way for young students to learn these calculations.  And, for those of mathematicians, it’s a great way to relax and feel confident that there is some part of math that you have mastered.  It’s in a free game format accessible right on the web, and it supports a good cause.   This is a great capitalization of our culture’s love of games and the internet to support another culture’s need for food.