Interactive
investigations which result in number sequences
Changing Places
In
this
problem , students might be :
- Appreciating the need to tabulate results
- Formulating ideas and testing them out
- Conjecturing about formulae that suggest themselves
Magic Potting Sheds
This
activity offers students the opportunity to explore a new
environment and challenges them to use some deductive
reasoning.
More Magic Potting Sheds
This
activity offers students the opportunity to go beyond the
environment introduced in Magic Potting Sheds as the multiplying
factor and the number of sheds can be increased to create a more
challenging context.
As with Magic Potting Sheds before, it requires students to work
systematically and challenges them to arrive at further
generalisations.
Frogs
This
is a well known puzzle but even if you have met it before you may
find more mathematics in it this time round. You can solve it on
the computer below or use a line of coloured counters or act it out
getting some friends to play the roles of frogs and toads.
Seven squares
This
set of problems that encourage generation of sequences and finding
the general term. The first problem includes some interactivities
which highlight two important ideas
- that there is more than one way to describe a pattern or
relationship and that any "visualisiation" will generate an
equivalent general term
- when creating tables of outcomes and using them to
helpdefinethe general term, it is important to look back at the
original situation to make mathematical sense of the result.
Interactive help with
summing simple number series
Sequences and series
In
this
problem you can investigate triangle numbers and their
relationship to rectangle numbers.
More sequences and series
In
this
probelm investigate how the sum of consecutive odd numbers can
be represented as square arrays.
Ideas based on the
Fibonacci sequence
Gnomon I
This problem is about gnomons (not gnomes!) which are very
remarkable mathematical L shapes. At the end of this question, it
suggests that you look at the shapes of the gnomons for the
alternate Fibonacci numbers and see what you notice.
Whirling Fibonacci Squares
An
article with an accompanying spreadsheet that makes the
connection between the Fibonacci Sequence and the Golden
Ratio.
Proof sorter
These two interactivites enable you to test your understanding of
the proofs for summing arithmetic and geometric series
Sum
of an AP
Sum
of a GP