Month: February 2013

400 Challenging Programming Problems in School Mathematics

High School Mathematics, Problems Sets, Resources and Freebies

If you are looking for programming problems to challenge yourself or to give to your students, then Project Euler is one good place to start.  According to the website, “Project Euler exists to encourage, challenge, and develop the skills and enjoyment of anyone with an interest in the fascinating world of mathematics.” True indeed, the site has collected more than 400 programming problems in mathematics.

Project Euler Programming Problems

Many of the problems are accessible even to Grade 8 students  but some are a bit challenging.  Non-computer science majors and non-mathematics majors who want to keep their “problem solving and mathematics on the edge” are also encouraged to try. To give you an idea of the difficulty of the problems, one problem is shown above.

If you want to take the challenge of Project Euler, you may want keep track of your progress by registering.

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Mersenne Primes Under the Microscope

High School Mathematics, High School Number Theory, History of Math

What are Mersenne Primes?

The recent discovery of the largest known prime number which is 17 million digits highlighted the importance of Mersenne primes.  This newest prime number and the thirteen largest primes are all Mersenne primes. But what are Mersenne primes really and why are they important in finding the largest prime numbers?

If a prime number can be expressed in the form 2^n - 1, n an integer, then it is said to be a Mersenne prime. The name came from Marin Mersenne who studied them, a French monk and well-known mathematician in the 17th century.

mersenneprimes

Many early mathematicians saw and conjectured that if n is a prime number, 2^n - 1 is prime.  For instance, in the figure above, for n = 2, 3, 5, 7 which are prime numbers, their corresponding 2^n - 1 values are also prime numbers. However, this is not true in general since 2^{11} - 1 = 2047 = (23)(89) is not prime.  » Read more

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6 Technology-Rich Math Blogs By Techie Teachers

Resources and Freebies, Web 2.0 Technology

Mathematics and Multimedia has been providing you with technology resources  for teaching and learning mathematics for the past three years. If you are going to ask me to list other math blogs similar to Mathematics and Multimedia, I can point you to six blogs that I usually visit to check for tech updates.

AMS-MAA Invited Address "Using mathematics to better understand the Earth's climate"

1. Great Maths Teaching Ideas

Great Maths Teaching Ideas shares maths teaching ideas and resources with teachers worldwide. Founded in July 2010, Great Maths Teaching Ideas has grown into one of the leading maths teaching blogs in the UK. With regular contributions, you can always find an idea on the site for teaching just about any maths topic. Curator of the blog, William Emeny is a full time maths teacher, a member of the TES Maths Panel and author of the best-selling teaching book 100 Things Awesome Teachers Do. » Read more

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