## Introduction to the DaMath Board Game Part 2

In the first part of this series, we have learned the basics of playing DaMath. We have learned the initial position of pieces on the board, how to move the pieces, how to capture the opponent’s piece, and how to score exchanges. In this post, we are going to learn how to capture multiple pieces.

In DaMath, it is possible to capture multiple pieces. For example, in Figure 1, the Red Player placed 8 on (4,5). Now, the Blue Player is required to capture 8 using 4.

Figure 1 – Blue Player’s 4 capturing Red Player’s 8

After capturing 8, it is now the Red Player’s turn to capture the Blue Player’s pieces as shown in Figure 2. Although capturing a piece is mandatory, capturing multiple pieces is optional. As shown, the Red Player is required to capture 4 using -5. However, he has also the option to capture -1 or 8. Note that capturing multiple pieces is considered as one move. Here are the possible cases. » Read more

## Introduction to the DaMath Board Game Part 1

DaMath is a math board game coined from the word dama, a Filipino checker game, and mathematics. It was invented by Jesus Huenda, a high school teacher from Sorsogon, Philippines. It became very popular in the 1980s and until now played in many schools in the Philippines.

DaMath can be used to practice the four fundamental operations and also the order of operations. It has numerous variations, but in the tutorial below, we will discuss the Integers DaMath. Note that explaining this game is quite complicated, so I have divided the tutorial into three posts.

The DaMath Board

The board is composed of 64 squares in alternating black and white just like the chessboard. The four basic mathematical operations are written on white squares as shown in Figure 1. Each square is identified by a (column, row) notation. The top-left square, for example, is in column 0 and row 7, so it is denoted by (0,7).  » Read more

## How to Guess the Day of the Week Your Friend Was Born

If you have some friends born between 1900 and 2000, then maybe you can impress them with this trick: find the day of the week that they were born.

Here are the steps:

(1) Let $y$ be the year of their birth. Evaluate $\frac{y - 1}{4}$ and ignore the remainder. For example, we want to know the date March 3, 1947, then we have

$\displaystyle \frac{1947 - 1}{4} = \frac{1946}{4} = 486$.

(2) Find what day of the year is the date and let’s represent it D. There are 31 days in January, 28 days in February, and March 3 is the third day.

$D = 31 + 28 + 3 = 62$

(3) Let $s = y$ + the result in (1) + $D$.

$s = 1947 + 486 + 62 = 2495$

4.) Divide $s$ by $7$ and get the remainder.

$\frac{2495}{7} = 356$ remainder $3$.

Now, you can guess the day of the week using the remainder.

Remainder: Day

0: Friday
1: Saturday
2: Sunday
3: Monday
4: Tuesday
5: Wednesday
6: Thursday

Hence, March 3, 1947 is a Monday.

Source: Nature of Mathematics

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