multiplication

  • Multiplication Methods Commentary

    Hello mathematicians, puzzlers, and other curious people! The other day I saw something in a (mostly math teachers and adjacent) Facebook group that\’s too good to not repost. Without further comment, since it speaks for itself: #whenIstoplearningnewthingspleaseplantatreewhereyouburyme

  • Multiplying Polynomials

    Hello mathematicians, puzzlers, and other curious people! Multiplying ordinary numbers is easier than lots of other things once you\’ve got the hang of it (though getting the hang of it in the first place can be tricky), but multiplying more complicated expressions can be — well, more complicated. Here\’s one example: what if you need…

  • Multiplication Puzzle!

    Hello mathematicians, puzzlers, and other curious people! Have you seen puzzles like this one? Take a minute (or a little longer) to try to solve it. If you\’d like to see how I dealt with it, and some questions I raised along the way and afterward, check out this video: Calc You Later!

  • Multiplying Square Numbers

    Hello mathematicians, puzzlers, and other curious people! Following up this previous post on square numbers, in this video I take a look at what happens when two square numbers are multiplied. As you can see, when you think you\’ve found a number pattern, formulas can help with showing whether that pattern will always work or…

  • Puppy, collar, bone \”solution\”

    Hello mathematicians, puzzlers, and other curious people! This video shows my work on a puzzle posted last week. As you can see, we can get different answers in some puzzles, depending on how we interpret them. That\’s OK! Just make sure you take notes on what assumptions you make in solving a puzzle so that…

  • Testing Patterns

    Hello mathematicians, puzzlers, and other curious people! This video contains three conjectures, one proof, and one counterexample (and therefore one open conjecture), based on this previous post. The important idea of what we did here is if we can find a formula that\’s equivalent to how we\’re coming up with some numbers, and that formula…