Sunday, October 14, 2007

Game

This game was introduced to me by Mo, so I give Mo full credit for letting me know about this game.

Randomly draw 4, 5 or 6 cards from a shuffled deck of cards. Using any of the four basic mathematical operators, combine all four cards to form a pre-defined number.

I've played this game with Mo, Charles Zhu, Charles Au, Josephine and Irfan, and this really provoked some thoughts in me with regards to problem solving.
  1. One has to simplify the problem into its essentials.
  2. There can be many solutions to one problem.
  3. With a defined criteria, the best solution can be found.
I've been quite inspired, having talked to Irfan, Charles and Joey about the outcomes of the game. I think that it's a very good game to teach to this year's kids. Like, maybe in a tutorial, we can devote one hour of time towards it.

1 comment:

minghan said...

There are actually many variations of this game. There was something like this for Math Week '06:

Form teams/groups of people. From the randomly shuffled deck of cards, draw 4 cards and using any of the four basic math operators (repetitions allowed), form an equation which equates to 24 using all the 4 cards. The fastest group to come up with a valid solution wins.

Of course, there will be some combinations of cards which won't give 24, but 24 works for most cases.