Recreational Math

  Some people read books when they want to relax, some cook, some take long rides but some people enjoy working math based puzzles.  This type of math is referred to recreation math.

Recreational math has been around for many years especially since Scientific American ran Martin Gardeners "Mathematical Games" for over 25 years.

One of his columns in 1975 inspired a woman to challenge his claim there were only eight polygon shapes that could be used to tile a plane.  Within two years, with nothing more than a high school math education, she'd discovered four new tessellations which were published in a mathematical magazine.

Martin Gardeners column introduced millions of people to recreational mathematics.  Today, more and more people are enjoying recreational mathematics in the form of Sudoku, logical puzzles, and so many other fun games.

Recreational math encourages both logical and lateral thinking  rather than advanced thinking skills so the average person can enjoy doing these puzzles without an thorough knowledge of math.  One of the more famous mathematical puzzles is Rubrick's Cube.  Did you realize the cube is so popular that over 350 million of them have sold since their creation in 1977? 

Another popular recreational math item are Sudoku puzzles.  They are logic based puzzles using number placement in a 9 x 9 grid to find the ways you can get the digits 1 to 9 arranged properly.  This modern version was created by Howard Garns, a 74 year old freelance puzzle writer in 1979.  It was first published by Dell Magazines as Number Place.  It is said that millions of people work these puzzles.

I love logic puzzles, the ones where you are given a bunch of clues to sort through using a grid to eventually figure out who did what in what order.  The creation of the first logic puzzle is credited to Charles Lutwidge Dodson, also known as Lewis Carroll author of "Alice in Wonderland".  He is responsible for the knights and knaves puzzles in which the knaves always lie and the knights always tell the truth.

There are schools in some countries that believe recreational mathematics can awaken a joy or curiosity in doing mathematics whereas the Common Core Standards does not look at math that way. Personally, I think if we could fire some sort of joy in our students through recreational math, they might find learning math more fun.

Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.