[This is a back-issue of this website’s newsletter]
Suppose you got two job offers, each job lasting 7 weeks.
- One job would pay you 1 cent on day one, 2 cents on day two, 4 cents on day three, and so on, doubling every day.
- The other would pay you $100 on day one, $200 on day two, $300 on day three, increasing by $100 each day.
Which would you choose? Which pays more?
Many of you will have seen puzzles like this before, even heard the story of the grains of rice and the chessboard that inspired it. However, many of the children we care for will not have seen it, and will find it hard to believe if you just tell them which deal is better.
I’ve prepared some worksheets around this conundrum, and uploaded them to http://www.dr-mikes-math-games-for-kids.com/rice-and-chessboard.html – you’ll also find suggestions for how they might be used in a classroom setting. For example, you could present the conundrum, and ask the kids to vote on which deal they think is best. Then assign them to groups and ask them, week by week, to add up the amounts earned under each of the two contracts. See the web page for more details.
If you are thinking of teaching Fibonacci numbers, there’s a worksheet for a third contract, where the amounts earned each day are Fibonacci numbers of cents.
So, visit the web page, download the worksheets, and plan how you’ll use them with the kids in your care. And don’t forget to spend a few moments dreaming, in these tough economic times, that someone might one day offer you a contract like these!