Newsletter March 15, 2013
Welcome to adventurous math for the playground crowd! I am Moby Snoodles, and I love to hear from you at moby@moebiusnoodles.com
Book news
This week, we had the thrill of holding the full file of the book in front of our eyes. The front and back cover, Library of Congress and ISBN numbers, Table of Contents, everything! It was so tempting to rush the book to you right then! But we had to follow the plan for another round of quality assurance, with multiple people checking and re-checking everything. More than thirty corrections of layout, text-illustration correspondences, and typos later, the book is going to the printers and the ePub formatting. We will have to check on the printer’s proofs, as well. Like Zeno’s arrow, “Moebius Noodles” is approaching the error-free state. No book ever gets there, but we’ll get close enough for all practical purposes!
Meanwhile, here are three of many stages of our back cover design: the finished look with 3D models of the real opened book; the first schematic of the layout; and an early draft. The back cover is a diagram of how to navigate through the book. We thought it would be a bit more useful than the advance praise you traditionally find on back covers, which we love too, by the way. We will be aggregating reviews online.
Blogs and networks
Sol Lederman interviewed Maria Droujkova for his Inspired by Math series on notable modern mathematicians and mathematics educators. Why is there so much computer science in the “Moebius Noodles” book? What is math literacy? What is Maria’s secret plan for taking over the world? Listen to the podcast and find out!
Our Spanish-speaking readers will enjoy math videos by our book illustrator, Ever Salazar. But math is a universal language! Check out what Mary O’Keeffe (Albany Math Circle) is doing, after having found the videos via the Moebius Noodles Facebook page:
Thanks to Maria Droujkova for bringing this wondrous, brilliant, and engaging series of math videos in Spanish to my attention! It is a terrific way for me to pick up at least a little bit of mathematical Spanish before my trip to lead activities at a math festival in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico this weekend.
Math Goggles issue #7 is inspired by Keith Devlin’s MOOC (Massively Open Online Course) on mathematical thinking. It is about the ambiguity of our language, with examples from newspapers, such as “Teen found after ski slope disappearance” (where did the slope go?).
Math Goggles #8 invites you to make puzzles using LEGO and other 3D tools.
Find a math and logic puzzle that you’ve not seen or solved before. Now, build it with whatever it is you have handy – cardboard, wrapping paper and glue; modeling clay; marshmallows and toothpicks; building blocks. You might like the challenge of recreating a pen-and-paper puzzle with 3-dimensional objects. Or you might like the idea of taking a 3D puzzle and drawing it.
Sharing
You are welcome to share the contents of this newsletter online or in print. You can also remix and tweak anything here as you wish, as long as you share your creations on the same terms. Please credit MoebiusNoodles.com
More formally, we distribute all Moebius Noodles content under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license: CC BY-NC-SA
Talk to you again on March 30th!
Moby Snoodles, aka Dr. Maria Droujkova
Posted in Newsletter
Pi is Calculus!
Pi is infinity.
Pi is about limits.
Pi is about sequences.
Pi is calculus!
And yet even little kids can play with Pi.
Little kids can do calculus!
Happy Pi Day!
Posted in Grow
1+1=5 Round two of the game!
What objects can you add, and what do you get as a result? I will re-post this game once in a while, as we find more good examples. Check out what Moebius Noodles readers submitted:
- 1+1=7 One square plus one pentagon equals to seven diagonals (JJ Rodríguez)
- 1+1=1 One car traveling east plus one car traveling west equals to one crash! (David)
- 1+1=45 One mother plus one daughter equals forty-five years old (Pei Lee)
Here is an example that makes me go “awww” – found via Arithmetic Village:
Moby Snoodles says: “Add your own example!”
These are examples we have so far. It takes about five minutes for your answer to appear here. Wait and then reload the page to see.
Posted in Grow
Math Goggles #8 – Make a Puzzle
This week’s challenge is a bit late, but better late than never. And the reason it’s late is because I was too busy playing exploring math with my son’s Legos. Anyway, are you ready for this week’s Math Goggles Challenge? If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, then here’s a helpful “what’s this all about” post.
This week, let’s work on some math and logic puzzles. If you do not like or avoid such puzzles because they make you feel anxious, nervous, stressed, harassed, tricked, lost, confused, insecure or otherwise remind you of a pop-quiz the day after you didn’t do your homework, relax. It’s not going to be like this. In fact, this challenge is not about solving puzzles (but if you do, that’s perfectly fine).
Here’s what to do this week. Find a math and logic puzzle that you’ve not seen or solved before. Now, build it with whatever it is you have handy – cardboard, wrapping paper and glue; modeling clay; marshmallows and toothpicks; building blocks. You might like the challenge of recreating a pen-and-paper puzzle with 3-dimensional objects. Or you might like the idea of taking a 3D puzzle and drawing it.
I got the idea for this week’s Challenge from MathFour’s 5-Room Puzzle post. I thought it’d be interesting to turn this puzzle into a little Lego adventure for my child. And so I sat down to build it. Admittedly, I didn’t do a very good job copying the puzzle exactly. But here’s what did happen. As I was building the puzzle, snapping Legos together, it occurred to me how I could check whether the puzzle I built had a solution. And that was a huge “AHA!” moment, I tell you and it felt great too!
So there you go. Find a puzzle that looks interesting, build it and concentrate on the process of building instead of on solving it. Enjoy!
Posted in Grow
