Chebucto Regional Softball Club

@leadore

Works!

@xarvos

There is more than one valid solution.

@CaptMorgan

This is great for students who have strong algebra. But that idea of using increasing powers? It's really not obvious that's what's going on when you first start.

But could one do something with... physical cubes and literal flat squares? That's Cuisenaire rods for decimal.

Are there... base 16 Cuisenaire rods? Why not? hmm....

@hypolite @lapis

Zero makes record keeping nicer and when you start using place value (as cuneiform does) to get more out of your limited symbol set ... zero make things less ambiguous.

One needs a way to show which place the symbol lives in even if you don't have everything written in neat columns.

@mcc

This works IMO.

@MxSpoon

Ok what if I tell you

▷ is first

WRONG: □▷▷ is last

RIGHT: □□▣ is last

I think that narrows down the valid solutions a lot.

I apologize. I gave an unhelpful hint here. It's late.

(I glanced over at the incorrect list.)

@SarraceniaWilds

Maybe ϵ would be another "zero at home"

@golgaloth

is this alphabetized?

@dahukanna

Imagine you have been learning to count in base 2, 3, 4 just before being asked to do this.

However, if the order can be explained with a few simple rules it's valid IMO.

@meltedcheese
I'm hoping this helps:

myrmepropagandist (@futurebird@sauropods.win)

I don't know how well this puzzle will translate to a toot. Imagine each line is on a card: □□▷ □□□ ■■ ■ □■ □▷▣ ▣ □▣ ■▷ ■▣ ▣▷ □□■ □▷ ▣▣ □□ □ ▣□ □□▣ ■□ ▷ □▷□ □▷■ ▣■ □▷▷ Put them in order. (The 5th graders could do it, but they did have a helpful example first... There may be more than one solution, but I think there is ONE really good order. Can you find it?) (I should also mention that every adult I've shown this to gives up. But I only showed it to two rather grouchy teachers.)

Sauropods.win (sauropods.win)

Yeah this is harder without cards to move around and put in arrays. But I think it's still possible.

@SarraceniaWilds

We have zero at home!

The zero at home: 0⁰

I don't know how well this puzzle will translate to a toot. Imagine each line is on a card:

□□▷
□□□
■■
■
□■
□▷▣
▣
□▣
■▷
■▣
▣▷
□□■
□▷
▣▣
□□
□
▣□
□□▣
■□
▷
□▷□
□▷■
▣■
□▷▷

Put them in order.
(The 5th graders could do it, but they did have a helpful example first... There may be more than one solution, but I think there is ONE really good order. Can you find it?)

(I should also mention that every adult I've shown this to gives up. But I only showed it to two rather grouchy teachers.)

@merms @graydon

They don't have place value. And they use... subtraction. But our students are very familiar with roman numerals for some reason (I think the PE staff uses them a lot?)

I want to bring them out when it can be more obvious how strange they are.

Change the symbols and I don't even know if you could do a sorting problem with them.

This student wants to "invent a new zero" so. Watch out everyone. Math is about to get a lot more... IDK ... but MORE.

The nice thing that happened in class today:

Grade 5 students solve a puzzle where they put cuneiform numbers in order (there is no guidance, just work with the symbols, how do you order them?)

I told them they are like archeologists cracking a code. They did it!

"But where is zero?"
"It wasn't invented yet." I said this seriously. I mean ... it's true.

Later that day the same student asked if it was a joke. I got to tell them no! Zero had to be invented. Everything had to be invented!

@rk @dancingtreefrog

I will use any damn thing like a number, watch me go.

@Catfish_Man

We have done that. I need them to be able to encode characters in binary, or understand how the system we write does that.

@dancingtreefrog

Thing is then when we get to hex they are upset that A and F are not "digits" but ... maybe.

Bases. (decimal, binary etc) are best explained through examples.

"You can only write three symbols in base 3. These are: 0, 1, 2"

So you count: 0, 1, 2, 10, 11, 12 ...

I think the word "symbols" is confusing, but so is "characters"? Students don't think of numbers or letters as "symbols" or characters. The card sorting puzzle helps with this. But I'm always refining the language:

How would you put this as plainly as possible?