I saw this game a while ago from Dan Finkel’s Math4Love site. We’ve used other activities based on ideas presented there. Students may remember trying to guess my rule, playing Target Number, or playing the Prime Climb board game; these all came from Math4Love. The game I’d like to introduce to you here is called Horseshoes.

This game is great for many reasons, not least of which being that it now has its own theme song! Please check it out in the video here. It will help if you can do so before our meeting later today so we can play it together (even while we are working remotely online). You can record your thinking any way you like when we play; if you like, you can use this document, which is set up a little like the whiteboards seen in the video.

Of course you can try it out before we meet and bring any questions you might have. You can also play the game anytime with family or friends (even on your own, why not?).

I still hope you’ll find some jokes to add to the comments in the last blog post. (That Joy4All joke hotline I mentioned recently is still making the news, by the way). So with that in mind, here is another amusing image from @McKellarMath.

(If you’ve looked at my copy of Math Doesn’t Suck, you’ll be familiar with Ms McKellar’s work. Anyone old enough may remember the character she played on TV’s The Wonder Years when she was about your age. She’s still living her double life as both actor and mathematician!)

…
How close can you get?
One, four and eight, nine, ten, yeah
You almost got it, try it a gain…