A little contest

In an effort to promote my newer site www.MathMammoth.com, I'm announcing this little "contest", in which it is quite easy to win a Math Mammoth book - or even two - for free, if you have a blog or website. The rules are as follows:

1. You write a little about MathMammoth.com site on your blog or website, and place within that text a link to the page of the book or books that you'd like to win!
   
   For example, if you'd like to win the Geometry 1 book, then you'd link to the page http://www.mathmammoth.com/geometry_1.php
   
   Instead of the individual book pages, you may link to the home page (www.mathmammoth.com), if that fits better your write up or your website. But I greatly appreciate the links pointing to the 'inside' pages.



2. Your link must be normal link, and not a scripted one or with nofollow tag. 



3. The link must point to www.mathmammoth.com or some subpage.



4. No adult, hate, or other weird or offensive blogs/websites/forums. 



5. No spammy sites, scraper sites, free-for-all pages, directory listings, or any such next-to-worthless sites. 



6. A blog comment on someone else's blog won't do either. 



7. Also I will not accept a brand new blog or site that you start because of this. It has to be an existing blog or site. 



8. Don't forget to let me know! My contact info is here or here. Remember to include your email address or I can't contact you. 



9. I will check your writeup and link, and reward you with one or two (maybe even three) books!

Questions and answers

1. How much do I have to write?

However much you feel like writing. I'm not setting any lenghts as such. It should be just something that appears normal to your readers, or fits well within your website. If it is a school website with a link list, then just put MathMammoth.com to the link list. If it is a blog, then a separate blogpost is in order, or a link in the "blogroll".


2. What should I write?

Just about anything... well, as long as it's not 'lashing' or mocking or being negative. I'm doing this for promotion purposes, so if you go against that, you're disqualified from the contest!

You can write something you liked about the site, or about the free sample worksheets, or even link directly to a PDF worksheet (but you ALSO need to link to one of the normal .php pages).

Or write about your math troubles (if any), and just put a link to the site somewhere within that rant. Or write about various math curricula, and include Math Mammoth as one. If it appears natural in a context, then that's great!


3. I don't have a website or blog.

You can do a posting on some public forum that you frequent already. It has to be a public access forum, and not a private Yahoo group or email list. The forum must be decent.. no 'adult' or 'hate' or other weird offensive forums.



These rules may be modified as need be.

Happy linking!

Maria Miller

Geometric patterns in islamic art

This was in the news recently so you might have seen it...

Physics student Peter J. Lu has discovered, after his trip to Uzbekistan, that the geometric patterns shown on the walls of old islamic shrines depicted a very complex mathematical pattern, one that was only found in the west during last century.

I feel the article at ScienceNews.org explains it all very well, and shows plenty of pictures of the patterns AND of the underlying tilings, plus has references and links for further study, so I'll just refer you there:

Ancient Islamic Penrose Tiles

Some links

First of all, the carnival of homeschooling #60 is online this week at Homeschool Hacks.

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Secondly, recently I've learned of Squidoo lenses created by Rebecca Newburn on topics such as integers and fractions. She's collected some of the best resources about these topics, including games, articles, explanations, books and even free video clips.

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Then I also wanted to include a link to some magic square addition worksheets that my daughter has greatly enjoyed recently (scroll down to item #5 on the page). We've been practicing adding single-digit numbers where the sum goes over 10, such as 7 + 7 and 9 + 5.

I always tell her that when it's 9 and other number, then one (dot) of the other number "jumps" to go with the nine and makes ten. That way she has learned to add 9 + 6 or any other such sum.

And if it's 6 + 7, I tell her to think of 6 + 6 which she knows by heart, and figure it out from there.

I hope she gets to remembering these by heart eventually, but at this point I'm just glad she is able to figure them out by using these 'helping' ideas. And of course using those also teaches her important principles of mathematics.

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And lastly, this one was interesting: What's special about this number? - a list of numbers from 0 to 9999, and there's something special about almost all of them!