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This is the Transum Newsletter for the month of March (Easter Edition). It begins, as usual with the puzzle of the month.
Given Easter egg baskets that come in sizes of 5, 12, and 18 eggs, what is the largest number of eggs that cannot be purchased using a combination of these basket sizes?
If you get an answer I'd love to hear how you solved the puzzle (or your students solved it). Drop me an email at: gro.musnarT@rettelsweN
While you think about that here are some of the key resources added to the Transum website during the last month.
A Functional Skills directory has been added to the website, after a number of subscribers asked for it. I have now finished mapping the learning statements to the related Transum activities.
Entry Level 1 of the Functional Skills syllabus does dip below the level of Transum resources but I have made a start at bridging the gap. Knowing Numbers is a brand new exercise and is linked from the very first learning objective of the course.
StatGrid is also a new resource. The challenge is to arrange the numbers one to nine to satisfy the mean, median and range constraints. Level 1 is laughingly easy but level 8 is rocket science.
Power Play is a new, multi-levelled exercise suggested by subscriber Mark. It can be used alongside the existing Indices exercises for those developing an understanding of powers, indices and exponents.
Shark's Dinner has been improved. As a subscriber you can decide which words are presented to your class. If you are of a certain age you'll recognise this game as being hangman.
Stepwise Sums was inspired by an isomorphic puzzle that appeared in the Grange Academy Mathematics Department Newsletter. This weekly free newsletter is always a great source for puzzles, jokes and amazing facts.
A new Level 5 has been added to Mixed Numbers because I know that three-quarters of people understand fractions while the other third don't :-)
A new Level 4 has been added to the Ratio exercises which seemed like a good idea at the time. It was only after I finished it that I realised that the help video no longer syncs with the levels. I'm hoping that won't cause too much confusion for the time being.
A new Level 10 has been added to Beat the Clock in response to a student who left a comment on the page asking for new levels because "I have finished 9 so many times and I love this game but it is getting boring doing only level 9 all the time"
Forthcoming special dates:
Here is the answer to last month's puzzle of the month which was:
What birthday did Attika celebrate in the last leap year of the last century if she is ten years older than Winthrup who will celebrate his 40th birthday in the last leap year of this current decade? Neither was born on 29th February!
Attika celebrated her 22nd birthday in the last leap year (2000) of the last century.
Podcast listener Rick explained why:
"This puzzle tests esoteric concepts of leap years. I checked with Google just to make sure my memory of these arcane facts were correct. Thankfully, they were.
The last year of the 20th century is the year 2000, not 1999. 2000 is a leap year because it is divisible by 400. Hence, the last leap year of the 20th century is the year 2000. The last leap year of the current decade is 2028. Therefore, Winthrop is 40 years old in 2028, and Attica, who is 10 years older than Winthrop, is 50 in the year 2028. Hence, she was 22 in the year 2000 (50-(2028-2000))."
And just for clarification I produced this flowchart:
That's all for now,
John
PS. I am terrified of negative numbers. I will stop at nothing to avoid them!
