| Reviewed: |
Apr 18, 2003 by Mathematics |
| Overview: |
Interactive Mathematics?Games & Puzzles is a major sub-page of the Alexander Bogomolny?s Cut The Knot! site reviewed elsewhere in MERLOT. It is a collection of approximately sixty miscellaneous games and puzzles including some well-known puzzles such as the Towers of Hanoi, the game of Nim, Cryptarithms, and Magic Squares along with a number of lesser-known but nonetheless intriguing puzzles that are designed to engage the reader in thoughtful and sometimes interactively experimental solution attempts. Most of the presentations are accompanied by well-written java applets that the author uses in an attempt to effectively draw the reader/user into exploring possible approaches; multiple solutions from various sources are often included afterwards. In addition, there is an excellent collection of links to other math resources with accompanying annotations. This site is highly interactive and one can sense the author?s fascination with mathematics and his desire to convey this to his readers.
Please see these related reviews:
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| Learning Goals: |
The primary goal is to help readers experience mathematical games and puzzles in a positive and interactive way by simply exploring. This may help them learn to appreciate the beauty and fascination of math and to delve deeper into the explanations behind the games. In addition, in the author?s words, ?Learning starts from wondering, and another purpose of this site is to serve as a resource for things, simple but curious, related to Mathematics.? |
| Target Student Population: |
The materials here cover a range of topics and ability-levels; most of topics are at high school and/or college levels. |
| Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills: |
Prerequisite skills vary from basic math knowledge to college-level math knowledge, depending on the topic. All of the material is presented in an accessible manner and the many java applets invite exploration and discovery. |
| Type of Material: |
This is a resource collection of textual materials along with a multitude of interactive java applets. |
| Recommended Uses: |
This material should be used to challenge the minds of students while simultaneously demonstrating to them that mathematics can be fun |
| Technical Requirements: |
A basic browser is all that is required to view the primarily textual material; a java-enabled browser is needed for the interactive java applets. The ability of the applets to run on different operating systems and browsers is highly variable with particular difficulties on older Macs and older versions of browsers. MacRuntimeJava2.1 may need to be installed independently of the older Mac OS and there still seemed to be difficulties with Explorer 5. Some failures resulted in particularly nasty system freezes. This is particularly true of this Games and Puzzles portion of the web site. For example,
Wythoff?s Nim does not run on Explorer 5 but does on Netscape 4.79; Towers of Hanoi does not run on either. |
