Saturday February 1 we had our first math circle meeting of the new year. Turnout was around 12 kids and we had an excellent session. The kids continued the discussion from the November meeting about patterns that occur for square numbers, and we ended with the following very nice pattern (and something very close to the equation) using only pictures:
$latex 1 = 1 = 1^1 $
Put another way, if you add up the first n odd numbers, you get 
We then generalized the pattern to triangular numbers. Here the pattern is easier, but the general formula is harder. We finished off with the specific question: How many dots are there in a triangle of side length 20? 200? 2000?
If you get started on these and really like the patterns, see if you can find ways to build shapes with more sides; pentagons? hexagons? octagons? nonagons?
Don’t forget to put the next meeting on your calendar: Saturday, March 1. We’ll have details of that meeting shortly!
Recent Comments