Friday, August 28, 2009

The Secret Number Game

Logical Reasoning (The Secret Number Game)

Many in-services ago, a colleague shared with me a neat little game called "The Secret Number Game". It was a great way to engage students and incorporate introductory experience with the dreaded mathematical proof. For this activity I focused on the flowchart style of proof.

Here is how it works:



After it appears that the students get a grasp of the rules, I pair them up to play the game against each other. The intent of this activity is to get each of them to create a flowchart proof that will allow another student to guess their number based solely on looking at it without the "answer bubble" filled in.

It took some students a few tries to get the type of flowchart that I wanted: one where a number could be found by looking at the organizational structure and connections. Proofs developed by a "lucky guess" or complete process of elimination really don't serve the purpose of this activity, so tables and flowcharts created this way were asked to be "tweaked" or done over.

For the big finish I asked the students to place their name and flowchart proof on a 1/2 sheet of paper with the "answer bubble" empty and crumble it up. Armed with these, they threw them at each other, uncrumbled, solved, and checked their answer with the original owner of the flowchart.

In retrospect, the students seemed to enjoy this playfulness and movement of the activity, and I would encourage you to give it a shot when and if you teach the basics of Flowchart Proofs.