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The terms "real" and "imaginary" carry so much meaning that people (aka pupils) would actually think that real numbers are real and imaginary are ... not so real.

Andriy M

@ypercubeᵀᴹ Did you teach them surreal numbers as well?

ypercubeᵀᴹ

I may have tried once.

Not much success

not young enough.

I would certainly like to try with 6 -8 year olds.

The guidelines were kind of strict and any deviation from the textbooks were looked upon as strange, at least.

Or some child would complain that I was teaching stuff not in the textbook and a parent might bring this into my attention in the next meeting.

Andriy M

Makes sense

ypercubeᵀᴹ

but at least the first year I taught in high school, I was lucky to have a few good classes (age 14-15) and we had a "puzzle time" each week.

Same puzzle to all 3 classes, so about 80 students.

Not easy to solve too quickly. But I had offered it as extra, no loss if anyone wasn't interested, so no complaints.

Andriy M

Were there many of those who like it?

ypercubeᵀᴹ

5:26 PM

yes, a lot.

Andriy M

Wow, that's nice

ypercubeᵀᴹ

It was nice to see students that did not pay too much attention at class, or had average grades to say that they spent hours on the puzzles.

Today, with the Internet, it would be much harder to do this.

one of my favourite was this. find the next number in sequence:
1, 11, 21, 1211, 111221, 312211, ...

hard for anyone who knows math. easy-peasy for a 4-year old

Andriy M

I'd say I'm neither, but for the record, I can't see it

ypercubeᵀᴹ

this is difficult because it is so simple.

Andriy M

Though if you are saying that it's easy for a 4-year-old, I guess it's one of those cases where you would facepalm yourself

ypercubeᵀᴹ

5:35 PM

If you start thinking about addition, multiplication or any other more complex pattern, it's not.

You need to know just counting.

Andriy M

Yeah, I gave up on math operations after a while, just tried working with the digits only, but no success so far

I mean, now that you said counting...

1, 11 is repeated at the end. Then it's 2, 2, 22, 22. Not sure about the 1s and the 3 in front

ypercubeᵀᴹ

you want a clue?

Andriy M

Yes, please

ypercubeᵀᴹ

ok, imagine you are a 4-year old.
you can count up to 9 but no more.
now try to read 111221 for me.

Andriy M

No, I guess I haven't spent much time among 4-year-olds lately. Not sure what I would be thinking at that age in this situation.

Or I just forgot how to think, perhaps

ypercubeᵀᴹ

5:49 PM

one-one-one-two-two-one might be one way to read it

Andriy M

Well, yes, I just don't see how that would help me

ypercubeᵀᴹ

another would be:
three-ones-two-twos-one-one

Andriy M

Haaa, goodness!

Soooo brilliant

ypercubeᵀᴹ

you actually need to count up to 3. no more.

it's proven that only digits 1 to 3 appear in the sequence

Look-and-say sequence

In mathematics, the look-and-say sequence is the sequence of integers beginning as follows: 1, 11, 21, 1211, 111221, 312211, 13112221, 1113213211, ... (sequence A005150 in the OEIS).To generate a member of the sequence from the previous member, read off the digits of the previous member, counting the number of digits in groups of the same digit. For example: 1 is read off as "one 1" or 11. 11 is read off as "two 1s" or 21. 21 is read off as "one 2, then one 1" or 1211. 1211 is read off as "one 1, one 2, then two 1s" or 111221. 111221 is read off as "three 1s, two 2s, then one 1" or 312211.The...

Andriy M

That's not pure maths though, is it? Kind of a blend of mathematics and linguistics, perhaps?

Not that it detracts from the brilliance of this sequence, of course, whatever you may categorise it as

2 hours later…