When our mail came on Saturday, there was a card for Max from our pediatric dentist. I mentioned it to him, and his first thought was, "Whatever it is, it can't be good!". I did persuade him to open it, and much to his delight, it contained a $25 gift card to ToysRUs!
It took us a few minutes to figure out that he had won a guessing game in the dentist's office. (I took him there last week to have his retainer fixed, and they had slips of paper to write your guess for how many straws were in a huge glass jar.) His guess was the closest -- I think it was something like 1,430.
I congratulated him on his good fortune, and he informed me that it was not just a lucky guess. Apparently he used the formula for the surface area of a cylinder (2 x pi x the radius squared + pi x diameter x height) to inform his decision. He then cut that in half and figured the area of the rectangle inside. Yeah... right.
"But you didn't have any measurements!", I protested. He used the first knuckle of his thumb to estimate, as it is about an inch long. "You mean, you just figured all that out in your head, in the 3 minutes or so that you were in the waiting room?", I asked incredulously. He just nodded nonchalantly, like it was no big deal.
I used to be pretty good at math. I enjoyed it, even. But I sure as hell wouldn't be able to pull this equation out of my mind, let alone compute it without writing it all down! I was totally impressed, and told him he'd better tell his teacher that he used math they had learned to win a really cool prize. I can't think of a better way to teach a child that math has real-world applications!
Monday, November 20, 2006
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17 comments:
What does pi have to do with it? I would never have gotten it right by doing math. I would have counted as many straws as I could see and then tried to estimate how many more there would be based on my count. Isn't that the normal way to do it?? I'm an idiot.
WHAT?! haha
I can't even use a calculator anymore, I am that Math resistant.
What!? That's the coolest thing I've ever heard.
oh math...my mind doesn't work that way. I am very impressed! I hope Miriam gets the math gene from her dad, or else she has many hard years of high school math ahead of her...not to mention terrifying math finals in college. To this day I have no idea how I passed biomechanics.
That is too funny! I loathe math, but I am proficient at it, however I don't think there's any way I could have even remembered the volume for the surface area of a cylinder, much less computed it in my head in a mere 3 minutes!! That is very impressive I must say.
How fun. I love unexpected stuff like that in the mail. Cool idea
My hats off...what a wonderful way to use your brain! I love math ever since I was little, I was among the first ones to finish up equations (we did little competitions) but from that to actually using it...at such young age! commendable.! and to get a price even superb!
Oh my gosh! That's really impressive! The ability to understand and apply math is amazing to me. I am truly blown away right now!
This is really impressive. Well done Max.
I HATE math. My dad is an engineer, very disappointed in my sub-par performance...
Great reinforcer though!
This stuns me. How smart is HE!! And what a great dentist you have. I thought I was terrible at math until I had a great teacher in graduate school and it changed everything.
He is a genius. I tried that little trick one time, but I didn't win. What a great gift.
What on earth! I love that he won and really figured it out. I thought I liked math but apparantly I have no idea what I am talking about, that seemed like a different language I used to "kind of get."
Very impressive!!
Very cute story! Your son should be so proud for applying math to a "real world" problem. So fun.
Wow he is so smart. I love math too, but I'd never beable to do that. He's amazing!
Good for him, can he help tutor me? It seems like I have forgotten everything since I was in college!
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