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Mathematics Project: Resources, Ideas and Tools

This document provides resources and ideas for mathematical projects. It discusses finding project ideas from internet resources, books, magazines, and everyday life. It gives examples of successful past projects that started from simple ideas or problems and were extended. The examples show how IT tools like Excel, Geometer's Sketchpad, and Java can be used. Generating non-obvious but understandable problems that lead to interesting mathematics is recommended.

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93 views24 pages

Mathematics Project: Resources, Ideas and Tools

This document provides resources and ideas for mathematical projects. It discusses finding project ideas from internet resources, books, magazines, and everyday life. It gives examples of successful past projects that started from simple ideas or problems and were extended. The examples show how IT tools like Excel, Geometer's Sketchpad, and Java can be used. Generating non-obvious but understandable problems that lead to interesting mathematics is recommended.

Uploaded by

c rk
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Mathematics Project

Resources, Ideas
and Tools
Dr Chua Seng Kiat

Singapore
Mathematical
Society
Contents

• Where are the resources for


Mathematical projects?
• How to generate interesting ideas for
Mathematical projects?
• How to use IT tools in Mathematical
project investigation?
Where to find the problems?
• Internet resources on Mathematics
• Books on recreational Mathematics
• Mathematics Magazines
• Challenging Problems from Mathematics
competitions
• Interesting Mathematics Questions from
everyday life
• Mathematical Games, Magic and Puzzles
Internet – Project Ideas
• Mentored Research Projects for Young Mathematicians
www2.edc.org/makingmath/default.asp
• Math Forum: Math Ideas for Science Fair Projects
mathforum.org/teachers/mathproject.html
• Math Projects for Science Fairs
camel.math.ca/Education/mpsf/
• MegaMath Projects
www.cs.uidaho.edu/~casey931/seminar/projects.html
Internet – Games, Puzzles
• Mathematical Games, Toys, and Puzzles
compgeom.cs.uiuc.edu/~jeffe/mathgames.html
• MathPuzzle.com
www.mathpuzzle.com/
• PUZZLES. Can you believe it?
www.archimedes-lab.org/
• Math Forum: MathMagic!
mathforum.org/mathmagic/
Internet – Math Resources
• Mathematics Enrichment: NRICH Home Page
www.nrich.maths.org/public/index.php
• The Math Forum @ Drexel University
mathforum.org
• MathWorld
mathworld.wolfram.com/
• Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
Books on Math
• Discovering Mathematics – The Art of Investigation by
A. Gardiner
• The Investigations Books – A Resources Book for
Teachers of Mathematics by J. Holding
• Geometry by Discovery by D. Gay
• Recreational Math books by Martin Gardner, Ivars
Peterson, Ian Stewart etc.
• General and Popular Math books published by Dover
Publishing and other publishers.
Math Magazines
• Mathematics in School published by the
Mathematical Association (www.m-a.org.uk)
• Math Horizons and Mathematics Magazine
published by The Mathematical Association of
America (www.maa.org)
• Mathematical Medley published by the
Singapore Mathematical Society
(sms.math.nus.edu.sg)
What type of problems?
• The problem should be easy to understand,
and must be sufficiently interesting for the
student to want to solve it.
• The solution should not be obvious.
• The attempt to solve it should lead to some
interesting mathematics.
• The mathematical techniques required to
consider and solve the original problem
should be elementary.
Examples
• Examples from winners of the Singapore
Mathematics Project Festival (SMPF)
• Where the ideas come from?
• How to start from a simple problems and
extend to an interesting project?
• How to use IT tools such as Excel, GSP, Java,
Flash, etc in project investigation?
Example 1 - Applications of
Pigeonhole Principle
• River Valley High School
Top Prize, SMPF (Senior) 2003
• Idea from Magic Card Tricks
• Many applications of the Pigeonhole Principle
are well known.
• Main result: To prove the magic card tricks
using the Pigeonhole Principle, which is non-
trivial for high school students.
Example 2 - Excursions into the
Moving Sofa Problem
• River Valley High School
Top Prize, SMPF (Senior) 2004
• Idea from the daily life:
Moving object around an corner
• The original Moving Sofa Problem is too
difficult for high school students.
mathworld.wolfram.com/MovingSofaProblem.html
Easier variations and
application to real-life problems
• Rectangle turning around corner which are
not right-angled.
• Rectangle turning around curved bends.
• Consider objects moving with speed. This
can be applied to real-life problem such as
moving vehicles turning at corners or
junctions.
Example 3 - Modification of the
Marion Walter's Theorem
• Seng Kang Secondary School
Silver award, SMPF (Senior) 2004
• Idea from the following website
www2.edc.org/makingmath/default.asp
• How to extend and modify?
GSP
• How to use GSP to explore?
Example 4 - Frogs
• Xinmin Secondary School
Silver award, SMPF (Senior) 2004
• Idea from the Leaping Frogs game.
• Extend to a (m, s, n) configuration, i.e.
m frogs on the left, n frogs on the right and
s spaces in the middle.
• Extend from 1-dimension to 2-dimension.
Example 5 - Lights Out Puzzle
• Bowen Secondary School
Bronze award, SMPF (Junior) 2004
• Idea from the Lights Out game.
• The game can be solved using binary matrix
but it may be too difficult for lower secondary
school students.
• Consider some special cases and solve them.
Example 6 - Raw Recruits

• Orchid Park Secondary School


Bronze award, SMPF (Junior) 2005
• Idea from the following website
www2.edc.org/makingmath/default.asp
• Try to find some patterns with different initial
conditions.
• How to use Excel to explore? Excel
Example 7 - Tiling for Maths
• Deyi Secondary School
Bronze award, SMPF (Senior) 2005
• Idea from the following competition problem:
How many different ways are there to tile a 4
by 4 square using 2 by 1 tiles? e.g.
From sample to complicated

• Tiling of 2 by n rectangle using 2 by 1 tiles


• Tiling of 3 by n rectangle using 2 by 1 tiles
• Tiling of 4 by n rectangle using 2 by 1 tiles
• Tiling of 3 by n rectangle using 3 by 1 tiles
• Tiling of 4 by n rectangle using 3 by 1 tiles
• etc ……
Example 8 - Dice Roller
• Xinmin Secondary School
Silver award, SMPF (Junior) 2006
• Idea from Rolling a Dice
• Try to look for rules and patterns.
• How to represent the rolling mathematically?
• How to use Excel to explore? Excel

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