# What a kid learning algebra can look like

Section 9.2 of Art of Problem Solving’s Introduction to Algebra is one of my favorite sections in any book that my kids have gone through. The section has the simple title – “Which is Greater?”

One question from that section that was giving my younger son some trouble today was this one:

Which is greater $2^{845}$ or $5^{362}$

I decided our conversation about the problem would make a great Family Math talk, so we dove in – his first few strategies to try to solve the problem resulted in dead ends, unfortunately. By the end of the video, though, we had a strategy.

Now that we’d found that $2^7$ and $5^3$ are close together, we tried to use that idea to find out more information about the original numbers.

I found his idea of approximating at the end to be fascinating even if it wasn’t quite right. It was also interesting to me how difficult it was for him to see that the two numbers on the left hand side of the white board were each bigger than the two corresponding numbers on the right hand side of the board. It is such a natural argument for someone experienced in math, but, as always, it is nice to be reminded that arguments like that are not obvious to kids.