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Resources tagged with Generalising similar to Squaring the Circle and Circling the Square:

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Squaring the Circle and Circling the Square

Stage: 4 Challenge Level:

If you continue the pattern, can you predict what each of the following areas will be? Try to explain your prediction.

Polycircles

Stage: 4 Challenge Level:

Show that for any triangle it is always possible to construct 3 touching circles with centres at the vertices. Is it possible to construct touching circles centred at the vertices of any polygon?

Tilted Squares

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

It's easy to work out the areas of most squares that we meet, but what if they were tilted?

Equilateral Areas

Stage: 4 Challenge Level:

ABC and DEF are equilateral triangles of side 3 and 4 respectively. Construct an equilateral triangle whose area is the sum of the area of ABC and DEF.

Semi-square

Stage: 4 Challenge Level:

What is the ratio of the area of a square inscribed in a semicircle to the area of the square inscribed in the entire circle?

Winning Lines

Stage: 2, 3 and 4 Challenge Level:

An article for teachers and pupils that encourages you to look at the mathematical properties of similar games.

Shear Magic

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

What are the areas of these triangles? What do you notice? Can you generalise to other "families" of triangles?

Picturing Square Numbers

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

Square numbers can be represented as the sum of consecutive odd numbers. What is the sum of 1 + 3 + ..... + 149 + 151 + 153?

Stage: 4 Challenge Level:

A counter is placed in the bottom right hand corner of a grid. You toss a coin and move the star according to the following rules: ... What is the probability that you end up in the top left-hand. . . .

Dicing with Numbers

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

In how many ways can you arrange three dice side by side on a surface so that the sum of the numbers on each of the four faces (top, bottom, front and back) is equal?

Jam

Stage: 4 Challenge Level:

To avoid losing think of another very well known game where the patterns of play are similar.

Go Forth and Generalise

Stage: 3

Spotting patterns can be an important first step - explaining why it is appropriate to generalise is the next step, and often the most interesting and important.

Sliding Puzzle

Stage: 1, 2, 3 and 4 Challenge Level:

The aim of the game is to slide the green square from the top right hand corner to the bottom left hand corner in the least number of moves.

Loopy

Stage: 4 Challenge Level:

Investigate sequences given by $a_n = \frac{1+a_{n-1}}{a_{n-2}}$ for different choices of the first two terms. Make a conjecture about the behaviour of these sequences. Can you prove your conjecture?

Multiplication Square

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

Pick a square within a multiplication square and add the numbers on each diagonal. What do you notice?

Pentanim

Stage: 3 and 4 Challenge Level:

A game for 2 players with similaritlies to NIM. Place one counter on each spot on the games board. Players take it is turns to remove 1 or 2 adjacent counters. The winner picks up the last counter.

Squares in Rectangles

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

A 2 by 3 rectangle contains 8 squares and a 3 by 4 rectangle contains 20 squares. What size rectangle(s) contain(s) exactly 100 squares? Can you find them all?

Multiplication Arithmagons

Stage: 4 Challenge Level:

Can you find the values at the vertices when you know the values on the edges of these multiplication arithmagons?

Nim-interactive

Stage: 3 and 4 Challenge Level:

Start with any number of counters in any number of piles. 2 players take it in turns to remove any number of counters from a single pile. The winner is the player to take the last counter.

Lower Bound

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

What would you get if you continued this sequence of fraction sums? 1/2 + 2/1 = 2/3 + 3/2 = 3/4 + 4/3 =

Nim

Stage: 4 Challenge Level:

Start with any number of counters in any number of piles. 2 players take it in turns to remove any number of counters from a single pile. The loser is the player who takes the last counter.

Chess

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

What would be the smallest number of moves needed to move a Knight from a chess set from one corner to the opposite corner of a 99 by 99 square board?

Christmas Chocolates

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

How could Penny, Tom and Matthew work out how many chocolates there are in different sized boxes?

One, Three, Five, Seven

Stage: 4 Challenge Level:

A game for 2 players. Set out 16 counters in rows of 1,3,5 and 7. Players take turns to remove any number of counters from a row. The player left with the last counter looses.

A Tilted Square

Stage: 4 Challenge Level:

The opposite vertices of a square have coordinates (a,b) and (c,d). What are the coordinates of the other vertices?

Attractive Tablecloths

Stage: 4 Challenge Level:

Charlie likes tablecloths that use as many colours as possible, but insists that his tablecloths have some symmetry. Can you work out how many colours he needs for different tablecloth designs?

Intersecting Circles

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

Three circles have a maximum of six intersections with each other. What is the maximum number of intersections that a hundred circles could have?

Nim-like Games

Stage: 2, 3 and 4 Challenge Level:

A collection of games on the NIM theme

Konigsberg Plus

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

Euler discussed whether or not it was possible to stroll around Koenigsberg crossing each of its seven bridges exactly once. Experiment with different numbers of islands and bridges.

Jam

Stage: 4 Challenge Level:

A game for 2 players

Painted Cube

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

Imagine a large cube made from small red cubes being dropped into a pot of yellow paint. How many of the small cubes will have yellow paint on their faces?

Special Sums and Products

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

Find some examples of pairs of numbers such that their sum is a factor of their product. eg. 4 + 12 = 16 and 4 × 12 = 48 and 16 is a factor of 48.

Sum Equals Product

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

The sum of the numbers 4 and 1 [1/3] is the same as the product of 4 and 1 [1/3]; that is to say 4 + 1 [1/3] = 4 × 1 [1/3]. What other numbers have the sum equal to the product and can this be so for. . . .

Mini-max

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

Consider all two digit numbers (10, 11, . . . ,99). In writing down all these numbers, which digits occur least often, and which occur most often ? What about three digit numbers, four digit numbers. . . .

Pareq Calc

Stage: 4 Challenge Level:

Triangle ABC is an equilateral triangle with three parallel lines going through the vertices. Calculate the length of the sides of the triangle if the perpendicular distances between the parallel. . . .

Games Related to Nim

Stage: 1, 2, 3 and 4

This article for teachers describes several games, found on the site, all of which have a related structure that can be used to develop the skills of strategic planning.

Picturing Triangle Numbers

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

Triangle numbers can be represented by a triangular array of squares. What do you notice about the sum of identical triangle numbers?

Tourism

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

If you can copy a network without lifting your pen off the paper and without drawing any line twice, then it is traversable. Decide which of these diagrams are traversable.

Frogs

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

How many moves does it take to swap over some red and blue frogs? Do you have a method?

Got It

Stage: 2 and 3 Challenge Level:

A game for two people, or play online. Given a target number, say 23, and a range of numbers to choose from, say 1-4, players take it in turns to add to the running total to hit their target.

Number Pyramids

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

Try entering different sets of numbers in the number pyramids. How does the total at the top change?

More Twisting and Turning

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

It would be nice to have a strategy for disentangling any tangled ropes...

Handshakes

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

Can you find an efficient method to work out how many handshakes there would be if hundreds of people met?

Mystic Rose

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

Use the animation to help you work out how many lines are needed to draw mystic roses of different sizes.

How Much Can We Spend?

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

A country has decided to have just two different coins, 3z and 5z coins. Which totals can be made? Is there a largest total that cannot be made? How do you know?

Egyptian Fractions

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

The Egyptians expressed all fractions as the sum of different unit fractions. Here is a chance to explore how they could have written different fractions.

Plus Minus

Stage: 4 Challenge Level:

Can you explain the surprising results Jo found when she calculated the difference between square numbers?

What Numbers Can We Make?

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

Imagine we have four bags containing a large number of 1s, 4s, 7s and 10s. What numbers can we make?

Got it for Two

Stage: 2 and 3 Challenge Level:

Got It game for an adult and child. How can you play so that you know you will always win?

Steps to the Podium

Stage: 2 and 3 Challenge Level:

It starts quite simple but great opportunities for number discoveries and patterns!