For those of you majoring in Mathematics Education, here is a website which contains games for students all the way from kindergarden to eight grade. Math Playground Games For middle school and high school students, try this site for games. HotMath Games
An interesting article I found while researching was called Odds on: the maths behind game shows published by ABC Science. This article discusses how mathematics could be used on everyday game shows to put the odds of winning closer to your favor. Although it is an opinion piece, which quotes Simon Singh, about how math strategies are better than your chance instincts it shows different ways to better win prizes on game shows by switching to his methods. Game shows such as Deal or No Deal and Let's Make a Deal which were popular and are popular shows on television today are discussed.
Also, sticking with the same game show theme, John A. Rock wrote an article called Mathematics Behind Game Shows: The Best Way to Play in May 2008. There are many problems for practice involving all types of mathematics, focusing on probability mostly. The author makes the problems fun by using well known subjects in the problems; for example, The Price is Right, Jeopardy, Dodgeball, Find the Fake, Coin Flip, etc. These problems can be done by anyone for fun on your own or in group activities in a classroom.
More information and games to come soon. If there are any requests for certain types of games or anything else, please let me know! Thanks, Carolyn Hanes
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Thanks for sharing info Carolyn.
I only want to add a little "game" I am beginning to play this semester- Project Euler. It is a small project initiated by Colin Hughes in which he and his peers posted mathematical challenges of all level, from novice (e.g. Problem 1:"Add all the natural numbers below one thousand that are multiples of 3 or 5." to extremely difficult (Problem 368: Kepmner Like Series).
What is interesting about project Euler is that it is like an Massive Multiplayer Online gaming experience for incredibly nerdy types (me, included)- you create an account, level up by solving more and more problems, score achievements, and share your answer to another user through problem-specific forums. Solving the problem alone is only marks the entrance to the Project Euler; the real challenge begins when you share your answer with other users to search for the most elegant (and therefore, beautiful) solution. For instance, I answered problem number 3 by writing a brute force program, thereby taking ~4-5 seconds to get my answer (any program that I write that takes more than a second to execute is an ill-written program). But I found another user who wrote a more efficient program that could do the same task in less than fraction of a second because he actually used his brain to recognize and craft a more efficient approach to the solution.
My aim is to solve at least one problem per week, starting tomorrow 23 January. This pace will certainly slow down as the difficult of the problem increases, and for anyone who wants to play the game together, please let me know at lee832 at purdue dot edu
