![]() They had to figure out how to get the cups in a single stack without breaking the rules. “Are you ready to play a game?” Regan asked. One Monday morning last November, small groups of second-graders sat in circles on the floor of the school gym, contemplating a row of upside-down paper cups. ![]() “Especially for younger students, a lot of it is about strategy, problem-solving, and seeing how many solutions they can come up with,” Regan said. The hour-long sessions are focused on two age groups: one is for fifth- and sixth-graders, and the other is for second-graders. Credit: Jared Lazarus, Duke University Communications Sixth-graders at Durham’s Central Park School for Children work together on a math puzzle that involves unwinding a pair of tangled ropes. ![]() Suddenly there was a yell from the back of the room, then a chorus of whoops and claps as a team found a solution. The students paused, took stock, tried a different approach. “Okay, so that doesn't work,” said Nelson, an assistant research professor of mathematics. “Maybe if you can’t undo it by yourself, you can just use scissors,” another boy joked. “That was weird,” one student said, stumped by a set of ropes failing to straighten out after multiple moves. The sixth-graders playing with ropes were abuzz as everyone talked simultaneously, coming up with ideas and trying out different strategies. “It's to try and change the view of what it means to do math, and who is a mathematician.” “Which is kind of the point,” said Regan, who runs the program with help from other volunteer instructors - faculty, postdocs and graduate students - from the department. It’s common for students to say they don’t feel like they’re doing math. Another time they had to place pretend “sheep” on a game board so there was no straight path for a wolf to get to them and eat them. One time, the kids had to color maps using as few colors as possible, and so that no two neighboring countries or states were the same color. Each session, the students think their way through different problems. The Duke-led circle meets once a week during the school day. Exploring ideas and asking difficult questions. Rather, the focus is on imagining, spotting patterns, persevering. There are no ready-made formulas to memorize. They take different forms, but all of them have a common aim: to help people experience math as mathematicians do. Today, there are more than 300 such groups nationwide. ![]() Similar clubs have been popular in Eastern Europe for more than a century, but math circles didn’t start popping up in the U.S. The students were part of a “ math circle,” an informal math club where students explore open-ended puzzles and riddles under the guidance of practicing mathematicians. ![]() The idea is to come up with a sequence of moves that will untangle the mess and get them back to zero where they started. Each twist and turn in the ropes represents a calculation with positive or negative fractions. The exercise is more than a rope trick, explained Regan, who is an assistant research professor in the math department. Credit: Bill Snead, Duke University Communications “What do you want to do?” Regan asked a group at the front of the room.Ī gangly 11-year-old in a puffer jacket threw out a suggestion: “What if you guys rotated around?”ĭuke Assistant Research Professors Anna Nelson and Maggie Regan instruct a sixth-grade class at Durham’s Central Park School for Children. Or, without letting go, each person could simply move one position clockwise to the left, rotating the ropes.ĭuke mathematicians Maggie Regan and Anna Nelson guided the students as they wrestled with the problem. They could either do something called a twist: One student lifts the rope in her hand while another student passes under and the two people swap places, creating a half-twist in the ropes. Their task was to disentangle the ropes using only two moves. While each person kept hold of one end, they ducked under each other’s arms and changed places in various ways in what looked like a square dance. On a chilly Friday afternoon in December, some twenty sixth-graders at Durham’s Central Park School for Children huddled together in groups of four, trying to unsnarl pairs of tangled ropes. Assistant Research Professor of MathematicsĭURHAM, N.C. ![]()
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