Less Is More Golden Eagles and Snowy Owls

The Golden Eagles and Snowy Owls from Anston Greenlands Primary School have found a number of solutions to ‘Less is More’, such as:

51 < 53

61 < 64

and

53 < 61

42 < 51

They found that after a few examples, they started being able to solve the problem after just one or two tries.

Here are some of their strategies:

• Put the smallest digits in the ones places and the largest digits in the tens.
• Make the numbers in the inequalities as close as you can in size.
• If you have two of the highest digits, put them both in the tens place in the top inequality.
• Put the second largest two-digit number first and the largest two-digit number to the right of it.
• If the tens digit is not the same in an inequality, make the ones digit as small as possible in the bigger number and make the ones digit as large as possible in the smaller number.

Some of the children started to have a go at ‘More Less is More’.

Here are some of their solutions:

63 + 55 < 63 + 61

66 – 45 < 66 – 35

66 – 23 < 55 + 64

Some of their strategies include:

• In sum-sum, you still need to put the largest digits in the tens position.
• In take-take, put the largest two digit numbers on the left hand side of each calculation and the smallest possible numbers after the subtraction sign.
• In take-sum, you need to put the largest two digit numbers on the far left hand side.