## Sharing Gary Rubinstein’s Perfect Number video with my 6th grader

Saw a neat tweet from Gary Rubinstein earlier in the week:

Our first project with his videos used his “Russian Peasant” multiplication video. That project is here:

Using Gary Rubinstein’s “Russian Peasant” video with kids

Today my older son is away at camp, so I was working with my younger son alone. I asked him to pick another one of Rubinstein’s videos and he picked the one on perfect numbers.

After watching the video I sat down with him to do a project – there was enough in Rubinstein’s video to easily fill three short videos, but we did just one. It was absolutely incredible to see how much my son took out of the perfect number video. There’s a fun and totally unexpected and unplanned connection with the Russian Peasant video at the end, too:

I love it when the projects go this well 🙂

## Two AMC8 problems that gave the boys a bit of trouble

I had a couple of things going on today and just asked the kids to work through an AMC 8 rather than doing a longer project. Each had one problem that gave them some trouble, so we turned those problems into a short discussion.

Here’s the first problem – this one gave my younger son some trouble – it is #21 from the 1992 AMC 8:

Here’s our discussion of the problem:

Here’s the 2nd problem – it is problem #24 from the 1999 AMC 8.

There’s some questionable advice from me and also some terrible camera work, but it was a nice discussion!

I like using the AMC problem to help the kids see a wide variety of accessible mathematical ideas. Despite being in a bit of a rush today, this was a fun project.

## Going through an IMO problem with kids

Last week I saw this problem on the IMO and thought that the solution was accessible to kids:

The problem is problem #1 from the 2017 IMO, just to be clear.

My kids were away at camp during the week, but today we had a chance to talk through the problem. We started by reading it and thinking about some simple ideas for approaching it:

The boys thought we should begin by looking at what happens when you start with 2. Turns out to be a good way to get going – here’s what we found:

In the last video we landed on the idea that looking at the starting integer in mod 3 was a good idea. The case we happened to be looking at was the 2 mod 3 case and we found that there would never be any repetition in this case. Now we moved on to the 0 mod 3 case. One neat thing about this problem is that kids can see what is going on in this case even though the precise formulation of the idea is probably just out of reach:

Finally, we looked at the 1 mod 3 case. Unfortunately I got a little careless at the end and my attempt to simply the solution for kids got a little to simple. I corrected the error when I noticed the mistake while writing up the video.

The error was not being clear that when you have a perfect square that is congruent to 1 mod 3, the square root can be either 1 or 2 mod 3. The argument we go through in the video is essentially the correct argument with this clarification.

It is pretty unusual for an IMO problem to be accessible to kids. It was fun to show them that this problem that looks very complicated (and was designed to challenge some of the top math students in the world!) is actually a problem they can understand.

## Playing around with the PCMI books

After seeing a plug for them on twitter I bought the PCMI books. They arrived yesterday:

The first book I picked up was Moving Things Around since the shape on the cover of the book is (incredibly) the same shape we studied in a recent project.

One more look at the Hypercube

I found a neat problem in the beginning of the book that by another amazing coincidence was similar to a (totally different!) problem we looked at recently:

Revisiting Writing 1/3 in binary

We started by talking about the books and the fun shape on the cover:

Now we moved on to the problem. It goes something like this:

Consider the number 0.002002002…. in base 3. What is this number? How about in base 4,5,7, and n?

We started in base 3 and the boys had two pretty different ways to solve the problem!

Next we moved on to base 4:

Now we moved to the remaining questions of base 5, 7 and N. Unfortunately I got a phone call I had to take in the middle of this video, so I had to walk away while the solution to the “N” part was happening.

We finished up with the challenge problem -> What is 0.002002002…. in base 2?

This is a pretty neat challenge problem 🙂

Definitely a fun start to playing around with the PCMI books. Can’t wait to try out a few more problems with the boys!

## Exploring induction and the pentagonal numbers

Yesterday we did a fun project based on this tweet by James Tanton:

That project is here:

Exploring a neat problem from James Tanton

During the project yesterday we touched on mathematical induction and also on the pengatonal numbers. Today I wanted to revisit those ideas with slightly more depth.

We started with a quick review of yesterday’s project:

Now we looked at a mathematical induction proof. The example here is:

$1 + 3 + 5 + \ldots + (2n - 1) = n^2$

(the nearly camera ran out of batteries, that’s why this part is split into two videos)

Here’s the 2nd part of the induction proof after solving the battery problem:

To wrap up the project we went to the living room to build some shapes with our Zometool set. The Zome shapes really helped the boys make the connection between the numbers and geometry.

The boys really liked this project. In fact, my younger son spent the 30 min after we finished making the decagonal numbers 🙂

## One more trip through Goldbach’s comet with the kids

We’ve now down a couple of projects on the latest Numberphile video on the Goldbach Conjecture:

Sharing Numberphile’s Goldbach Conjecture video with kids

Exploring the Goldbach Comet with kids

Following those projects I thought it would be neat to let the computer run and find the numbers that could be written as a sum of two primes in many different ways (specifically, in more ways than any number less than it). Looking at those results produced a nice surprise:

An unexpected surprise for me in the Goldbach Comet

A double surprise was that Numberphile had just (the day before) published a follow up Goldbach Conjecture video that talks a little bit about the idea that explains the pattern I was seeing:

Last night I walked the kids through some of the ideas. We first watched the end of the Numberphile video and then talked about it briefly.

Also, I was pretty under the weather yesterday, so sorry for the low energy from me in this project:

Next we moved on to looking at the Goldbach Comet and told them about the project I was looking at while they were up in New Hampshire hiking.

They noticed the same pattern that I saw and I showed them the prime factorizations of a few of the numbers on my list.

After we talked about the factoring, I wanted to show them another surprise – the Goldbach Comet looks surprisingly symmetric around the numbers that can be written as the sum of two primes in lots of ways.

Fianlly, we wrapped up the project by looking at the symmetry I mentioned above a bit more carefully. I’d like to explore this symmetry a bit more myself!

We’ve really had a fun set of projects on the Goldbach Conjecture. It is definitely accessible to kids and a great way to show them an unsolved problem in math!

## Exploring the Goldbach Comet

My wife and kids are going hiking today and I was looking for any fairly light project to do with the boys before they left. This morning I thought playing around with the Goldbach Comet would be a fun idea. We learned about it last week in Numberphile’s Goldbach Conjecture video:

Our first project from that video is here:

Sharing Numberphile’s Goldbach Conjecture video with kids

Today’s project needs a little disclaimer . . . . Sometimes when I decide to try something at the last minute things actually work out ok. Today was much more stumbling around than usual, unfortunately. But we had fun exploring anyway.

So, we started with some simple Mathematica code to explore the number of ways to write an even integer as the sum of two primes:

I gave the boys a challenge of finding the largest even number that can be written as the sum of two primes in 6 different ways. Then we played around a bit more – stumbling around aimlessly . . . .

Finally we used a program from the Wolfram Demonstrations Project to play around with the Goldbach Comet. That project we used is here:

The Goldbach Coment on the Wolfram Demonstrations Project site

I mainly used the code here to ask the kids what they thought they were seeing.

So, a fun project despite the numerous stumbles. I’d actually never heard of the Goldbach Comet prior to the Numberphile video. It was neat to play with.

## Sharing Numberphile’s Goldbach Conjecture video with kids

Numberphile released a really nice video about the Goldbach Conjecture today:

I thought it would make an excellent project with the boys even though some of the ideas involving logarithms might be over their head. So, we watched the movie and then talked about some of the ideas that caught their eye.

Next we moved on to the individual ideas. The first one was the chart that David Eisenbud made at the beginning of the video. Drawing and then filling in this chart is a nice little arithmetic activity for a kid in elementary school.

Next we talked about logarithms. I started with an idea I learned from Jordan Ellenberg’s book “How Not to be Wrong” – the “flogarithm”. That idea is to oversimplify the logarithm by defining it to be the number of digits in the number. That simple (and genius) idea really opens the door to kids thinking about logarithms.

With that short introduction I explained what the natural logarithm was and moved on to some of the properties of primes that Eisenbud mentioned in the video (after fumbling with the calculator on my phone for a minute . . . .).

(Also, I noticed watching the video just now that I forgot to divide by 2 at one point – sorry about that.)

Finally, we checked a specific example – how many ways were there to take two primes and add up to 50? This part is about as far away from the complexity of logarithms as you can get – just some nice arithmetic practice for kids.

To warp up I asked them if they knew any other unsolved problems about primes. My older son mentioned something about twin primes. I showed the boys a simple argument (fortunately quite similar to the one Eisenbud gave in the movie for why there are lots of ways two primes can add to be a given even number) for why there ought to be infinitely many twin primes.

I think that kids are going to be naturally curious about primes. The Goldbach conjecture is one of the few unsolved problems that kids can understand. It was fun to share this video with the boys tonight.

## Sharing Grant Sanderson’s “Pi and Primes” video with kids part 2:

Grant Sanderson’s latest video explaining a connection between pi and prime numbers is absolutely fantastic:

This video is sort of at the edge of what kids can understand, but it was fun to explore a few of the ideas with them even if understanding 100% of the video was probably not realistic. Our project on the first 10 min of the video is here:

Sharing Grant Sanderson’s Pi and Primes video with kids part 1

Also, we did a project on a different approach to the problem Sanderson is studying previously:

A really neat problem that Gauss Solved

I intended to divide our study of Sanderson’s video into three 10 minute sections, but the second 20 minutes was so compelling that we just watched it all the way through. After watching the last 20 min a 2nd time this morning I asked the kids what they found interesting. The three topics that they brought up were:

(i) The $\chi$ function,

(ii) The formula for $\pi / 4$, and

(iii) Factoring ideas in the Gaussian integers

Following the introduction, we talked about the three topics. The first was factoring in the Gaussian integers. We talked about this topic in yesterday’s project, too.

Next we talked about the $\chi$ function. I had no idea how the discussion here was going to go, actually, but it turned out to be fantastic. The boys thought the function looked a lot like “remainder mod 4”. Why it does look like that and why it doesn’t look like that is a really neat conversation with kids.

Finally we talked through the formula that Sanderson explained for $\pi / 4.$ It probably goes without saying that Sanderson’s explanation is better than what we did here, but it was nice to hear what the boys remembered from seeing Sanderson’s video twice.

I love having the opportunity to share advanced math with kids. I don’t really have any background in number theory and probably wouldn’t have tackled this project with out Sanderson’s video to show me the path forward. It really is amazing what resources are on line these days!

## Sharing Grant Sanderson’s “Pi and Primes” video with kids. Part 1

[This one was written up pretty quickly because we had to get out the door for some weekend activities. Sorry for publishing the un-edited version]

Grant Sanderson has a new (and, as usual, incredible) video on “Pi hiding in prime regularities”:

By coincidence, we’ve done a project on this topic before:

A really neat problem that Gauss Solved

The old project is based on Chapter 8 from this book:

Sanderson’s new video is pretty deep and about 30 min long, so I’m going to break our project on his video into 3 pieces. Today we watched (roughly) the first 10 min of the video. Here’s what the boys took away from those 10 min:

The first topic we tackled today was how to write integers as the sum of two squares. This topic is the starting point in Sanderson’s video and the main point of the project from the Ingenuity in Mathematics project. We explored a few simple examples and, at the end, talked about why integers of the form 4n + 3 cannot be written as the sum of two squares:

Next we turned our attention to the complex numbers and how they came into play in (the first 10 min of) Sanderson’s video. My focus was on the Gaussian Integers. In this part of the project we talked about (i) why it makes sense to think of these as integers, and (ii) how we get some new prime numbers (and also lose a few) when we expand our definition of integers to include the Gaussian Integers:

To wrap up I mentioned the topic from the prior project. The question there is something like this -> since counting the exact number of ways an integer can be written as the sum of two squares is tricky, can we say anything about how to write an integer as the some of two squares?

Turns out you can, and that the average number of different ways to write a number as the sum of two squares is $\pi$. Pretty incredible.

[and, of course, I confused an $n$ and $n^2$ in the video 😦 Looking at the prior project will hopefully give a better explanation than I did here . . . . ]

I’m always excited to go through Grant Sanderson’s video with the boys. He has an amazing ability to take advanced ideas and make them accessible to a wide audience. Sometimes making the topic accessible to kids requires a bit more work – but Sanderson’s videos are a great starting point.