Cindy Aossey and Dee Crescitelli started the session with a notice and wonder about two graphs.
Graceful Labeling of Graphs
Category: Uncategorized
A Chess Puzzle
Inspired by the hit TV show The Queen’s Gambit, we tackled a chess puzzle in February’s evening meeting. Sophie shared a problem from one of Alex Bellos’s recent Monday Math Puzzles. Here it is:
Before we went into our breakout rooms, we spent a bit of time clarifying the ways that a Queen can move on the board, and making sure we agreed about which squares were “unattacked” or “safe.” (We had some debate about the square that the Queen is sitting on. In the end, we decided that this was not a safe square.)
Check out the Jamboard to see some of the work we did (or don’t, if you don’t want any spoilers!) One question we found intriguing was, “how do you know when you’ve found the best answer?”
Since then, many of us have been playing chess on chess.com. We’re even thinking about starting a CAMI chess club. Want to play? Send us a message and we’ll loop you in.
Why are maintenance covers round?
In the December evening meeting, Amy Vickers led us through a new exploration that was loosely inspired by last month’s meeting on some circles.
As a warm-up, Amy presented us with this question: Why might a manhole cover (or, in the gender-neutral, maintenance cover) be round? One of the central ideas that came up in the resulting discussion was that a circle won’t fall through its own hole, no matter which way you turn it. It has a constant diameter, or constant width.
Rainbow Squares
Warm-up:
We started with a quick game of online Simon Says.
It was okay, but a little clunky. Usha suggested a different kind of activity where video on means yes and video off means no. Read a series of statements. Here are a few I brainstormed: Winter is my favorite season of the year. I love ice cream. I am excited to be back in school. I want to go to college. (You probably have better examples.) End with a statement everyone can say yes to…
Continue reading “Rainbow Squares”Apportionment Math!
For November’s evening meeting, Eric led us through an interesting exploration of past and present methods of determining how many congressional seats to apportion to states of various populations.
The meeting began with the following warm up:
An adult education program is hiring 37 teachers to teach at 3 different sites. Each teacher can work at one site only.
Site A: 1500 students/year
Site B: 1000 students/year
Site C: 100 students/year
How many teachers should go to each site?
Continue reading “Apportionment Math!”Election Math
How are elections won and how would different voting methods affect the outcomes? For the September evening meeting, Usha led us through an exploration of the math behind elections.
The Game of Life
What if a few simple rules governed all life on earth? Audrey brought John Conway’s Game of Life to April’s evening CAMI meeting.
Below is an intro video to the Game of Life.
The Secretary Problem
Audrey introduced the group to a classic problem from optimal stopping theory (whatever that is). 🙂
If you’re on the search for a new secretary, how would you choose who to hire? For June’s evening CAMI meeting, Audrey shared a classic problem with the group:
The Popular Secretarial Problem!
There are N applicants for a secretarial position. The applicants are interviewed in random order, and you must accept or reject a candidate immediately after interviewing them.
After you reject someone, there is no way to bring them back.
There is only one position available. So as soon as you accept a candidate, you’re done. What strategy should you use in order to maximize the likelihood of hiring the best candidate out of the N applicants?
Some of the assumptions we used when exploring the problem:
- There is one best candidate.
- If you could see all the candidates at one (you can’t), you would be able to rank them all from best to worst.
Tropicana Cash Wheel
In this meeting, Steve challenged us to figure out the best of some bad choices at the casino.
Steve started today’s meeting by sharing that he had recently noticed that the Tropicana Casino in Atlantic City has a game called the Cash Wheel. Steve took notes on what he saw and presented us with a representation of the Cash Wheel. Continue reading “Tropicana Cash Wheel”