Math Curse - Hammersley, Scott C. Blog Assignment Number 3

1. The book I chose to study for this blog post is Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith’s Math Curse. A favorite childhood book of mine, the story begins with our protagonist starting his day off in elementary mathematics in school. His math teacher Ms. Fibonacci, stats innocently one day during her class that “You know, almost everything in life can be considered a math problem”, on page 2 of the book this begins his downward spiral into the curse of math. Upon the next morning our young protagonist awakens to a series of problems that involve his ability to be adequately prepared for school in time. The bus comes to pick him up at 8:00 am, but he has to brush his teeth, get dressed, and eat breakfast. A sleepy, math baffled brain, begins to wander and ask itself confusing questions, such as why he still has that ugly Christmas sweater from Uncle Zeno. Our protagonist continues on to go into his kitchen and grab some cereal. Surprise however, even cereal can be viewed as a math problem. He begins to question how many quarts make up a pint, and how many flakes go into a bowl of cereal. The protagonists thinks better of this than spending his entire morning trying to find problems to figure this out, he heads to the school bus for school.

            As he arrives on his school bus, it too becomes a math problem. At every stop the same amount of kids get on, but he needs to know how to determine the bus driver’s name. Further, he becomes preoccupied with the number of birthdays in his class and trying to figure out why they closely resemble a row of buildings when presented in a bar graph.

            Once in class an entirely new series of problems begins to present itself to our protagonist. There are 24 kids in his class, and he begins to question how many pairs of eyes there are in the class, along with tongues, and ears. Our young hero also begins to wonder how many ways are possible to re-arrange the structure of the room. You could use three rows, two rows, and so on. He is about to drive himself crazy, but fortunately the lunch bell rings. In his school they are serving pizza, which is cut into eight slices, and apple pie, cut into six slices, for lunch. How many ways can he ask for two slices of pizza? Further, which is better a half of a pizza or a half of a pie, he wonders to himself. Fortunately they had not gotten to the fractions unit, so our hero decides to take twelve carrot sticks, three at a time and eat them two at a time.

            Back in social studies class, however, it too becomes a mathematical cascade of information. The hero is faced with a geography problem to calculate how many M&M’s^® it would require to measure the length of the Mississippi river. He knows that 1cm=1M&M and that 1km=1,000cm. But gets distracted wondering how many M&Ms one could eat out of the amount it takes to measure the Mississippi river. English class becomes a series of world problems. For example, does mail + box=mailbox? Or does lipstick- stick = lip? Physical education becomes no easier as this class becomes a series of sports problems dealing with comparisons of Babe Ruth’s batting average and salary paid, to the average baseball player’s salary and batting average in 1991. He hoped to relax in art class where they were allotted time to do a connect the dot puzzle. Unfortunately for our hero, it is an ancient Mayan numerals connect the dot puzzle.

            Back in Ms. Fibonacci’s class the students go over the ways they count. One simply counts by one’s on each finger, adding up to 10. Another student counts by twos adding up to ten, while Ms. Fibonacci recites the first few numbers of the Fibonacci number sequence. Further, our hero wonders what aliens with only two fingers count, or what aliens on the planet binary count to. Apparently it’s ‘1, 10’. Following this our protagonist finds the class is having problem with determining what portion of cupcakes each student will receive if there are 25 people and only 24 cupcakes. Our hero graciously states that he is allergic to cupcakes, and therefore will not need one, reducing the number to equilibrium at 24=24.

            Leaving class the hero wants to buy his favorite candy bar to help him with his qualms. Unfortunately, however, it is 10% of its usual sale price of $0.50. He gets confused in calculating how much it will cost now, and even cites the quadratic formula to calculate an answer. He pulls out of his pocket a $5 bill, $1 bill, $0.25 and $0.01. He begins to ponder how many $1 are equal to a $5 bill and if Thomas Jefferson is upset he is not on any of the commonly used bills of money.

            Returning home our hero is convinced he is becoming a math zombie. He begins to fret that his will keep up an entire year as he grumbles this as an answer when his sister snarls at him asking what is wrong. He continues to deal with the problem of figuring out if one of his parents is speaking the truth or not at dinner and more mathematical problems when he gets prepared for sleep. His dreams, however, are no vacation. He is trapped in a chalk-board room full of mathematical problems. In his hand he holds a piece of chalk and realizes that if he breaks it in two he can create one ‘hole’ and jump out. He’s free from his curse!

            He awakens the next morning with no mathematical concepts or problems running through his head and gets ready for school without any problems. Everything goes well until in science class Mr. Newton says “You know, you can think of pretty much anything like a science experiment”.

2. With no overarching theme, the book Math Curse deals with a multitude of mathematical concepts.

            The first one we will examine is the linear function that occurs when our hero gets on the bus. As stated in the example, when he gets on the bus five kids get on we will assume that the base number of kids is 0. Following this, five more kids get on at the next two stops. Even with little information, it can be reasonably inferred that the function for this linear function is represented by f(x) =y= 5(x).

            The above equation shows that y is the number of kids on the bus, ‘0’ is our y-intercept, and ‘x’ represents the bus stop.

This function works properly assuming that there are no negative stops occur and all the values of ‘x’ are above 0.  

After each stop 5 kids get on the bus. Therefore every stop adds five more kids to the bus until it reaches its full capacity. This is a great example of a linear function.

            The next example we will look at is when our hero walks into class and begins to think about all the ways to redefine the room he lives in. This is a proper example of domain and range, as we assume that the room is a box. Given these parameters, and as our protagonist stated, the lowest number of rows we can have is 2. We also know there are 24 kids in his class, which is our highest bound.

            (Rows) Therefore our domain function is Interval Notation: [2, 24]

                                                                  Set-Builder Notation {XeN I 2 < X < 24}

            (Columns) Therefore our range function is Interval Notation: [24, 2]

                                                               Set-Builder Notation {YeN I 24< Y < 2}

The book does a good job of displaying the domain and range of the function because it allows for us to see that only natural numbers can be used. This is because we cannot have a negative value for X or Y, nor can it be an irrational or rational value. An interesting example of both domain and range dealing with a real world issue of how many rows and columns of seats to set up creates a nice answer for our domain and range.

3. I believe that it is important and effective way to teach mathematics in literature because it makes the mathematics enjoyable. It does so by providing an interesting array of photographs and an enticing storyline to accompany the mathematical equation. It is proven in many psychological studies that people tend to learn best when there is an image to accompany the concept one is trying to learn. For example, the image of the bus may be able to help someone remember the idea of a linear function when they get older.

            I also believe that using literature to represent mathematics is important because it helps to create a tangible example for learning mathematics when one grows up. I find, personally, the biggest problem when studying for a test dealing with mathematics may be a lack of examples. In literature, however, there are a ton of examples such as in Math Curse. This is why it is important to use literature to help teach mathematics.