One Hundred Factorial

Gerry-mean-dering

August 12 2023

A recent video from Howie Hua showed how if you split a collection of numbers into equal-sized groups, then find the mean of each group, then find the mean of those means, it turns out this final answer is the same as the mean of the original collection. He was careful to say it usually does not work if the groups were different sizes. Which got me to wondering: just how much of an effect on the final mean-of-means can you have by splitting a collection of numbers into different-sized groups?

Making the lie true

July 13 2023

We at my university regularly sell quite a big lie.

Introducing Digit Disguises with a small game

July 08 2023

Because [reasons], my game Digit Disguises has been on my mind recently, and reading the original blog post from 2019, I suddenly realised I had never shared my ideas on how to introduce the game to a whole class at once.

Running out of puzzles

February 02 2022

Because people know I run the One Hundred Factorial puzzle sessions, they often ask me if I have a repository of puzzles they can use for their classroom, enrichment program, maths club, or their own enjoyment.

Quarter the Cross: Connect the Dots

November 15 2020

This blog post is about a new variation on the classic Some resources linked from this post: problem, which I call Quarter the Cross: Connect the Dots.

Changing the goal of the Numbers game

September 06 2020

I conscripted the game Numbers and Letters seven years ago to help promote the Maths Learning Centre and the Writing Centre at university events like O'Week and Open Day. Ever since then, it has always bothered me how free and easy participation in the Letters game is, while the Numbers game is much less so. This Open Day I had a remarkable idea: instead of stating in the rules that the goal is to achieve the target, and trying to encourage people to take a different approach, what if I just changed the stated goal! I don't know why I didn't think of it before, to be honest!

Number Neighbourhoods

September 05 2020

This blog post is about a game I invented in February 2020, the third in a suite of Battleships-style games. (The previous two are Which Number Where and Digit Disguises.)

Quarter the Cross: Colouring

August 25 2020

Quarter the Cross is one of my favourite activities of all time, whether in maths or just life. I learned about it way back in 2015 and have been mildly or very obsessed with it ever since. This blog post is about one particular version of the Quarter the Cross problem you might like: the colouring version!

Which Number Where

August 18 2020

Last year I invented a game called Digit Disguises and it has become a regular feature at One Hundred Factorial and other events. But before Digit Disguises came along, there was another game with a similar style of interaction that we played regularly, and this blog post is about that game. The game is called "Which Number Where?"

The MLC Date Blocks

April 10 2020

This blog post is about a piece of the MLC learning environment which is very special to me: the date blocks. It’s a set of nine blocks that can be arranged each day to spell out the day of the week, the day number, and the month. I love changing them when I set up the MLC in the morning, so much so that since the face-to-face MLC closed due to COVID-19, I brought them home and have been changing them each morning here in the dining room. The story of how this object came into the MLC is the reason it is so special to me.