May 5th, 2010
Reluctant golfer that he is, the God of Whizz has finally stumbled across the best use for all those silly little balls – maths. Fractals, in fact.
Rather than serve only to be hooked, sliced, or shanked into the near distance, chased by a volley of insults, hundreds of red and blue golf balls have been put towards a magnificent three-dimensional Sierpinski Triangle (or tetrahedron, in this instance).
A use for golf balls - maths fractal pyramid
To those otherwise unversed in Sierpinski’s Triangle (also known as a ‘gasket’), it’s a beautifully elegant fractal.
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October 28th, 2009
We never stop at Maths-Whizz.
We’ve just added a fabulous new feature – Maths Challenges – to our burgeoning range of tools proven to boost kids’ maths abilities.
With Challenge, students can use their maths skills to take on all-comers from across the globe. We have thousands of Maths-Whizz students in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Australasia.
Until yesterday, Maths-Whizzers had to share maths skills and a lesson history with one of their limited buddy list. Now the Maths-Whizz system automatically locates students with similar skills profiles to be challenged on completed lessons.
If you’re a parent of a Maths-Whizzer, our latest feature will be perfect for helping you motivate your student, encourage some healthy competition, and boost their confidence in maths. Parents or teachers won’t need to worry about confidentiality, Whizzers cannot post comments to other challengers.
One thing to remember – with new Challenge we now only award credits for improving lesson scores or times in Replay. If you’re already scoring 100% with a fast time, it’s time to try another one of our 1200 animated maths lessons.
Login now to our top-flight online maths tutor to try out Challenge!
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June 15th, 2009
Here’s a simple idea, reported by The Bolton News, that marries maths and mucking about: A human-sized 100-grid in the playground.
The Bolton news story notes that Blackshaw Primary School’s huge playground grid will challenge mind and body, and boost social skills.
It’s a nice example of joined-up thinking at a school and it will be interesting to see how the students end up using the grid in their spare time. After all, American children playing jump-rope devise fiendish routines by themselves; I wouldn’t be surprised if the children of Blackshaw Primary come up with some challenging games with the help of their new 100-grid.
Which reminds me – Maths-Whizz Teachers’ Resource developments are moving on apace, and something teachers can look forward to in this autumn’s update is a fully-interactive 100-grid, in response to feedback from our teachers.
Find out more about Teachers’ Resource updates in the coming months.
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June 3rd, 2009
The Maths-Whizz Tutoring Student update, previewed here, is now live! Woohoo!
What? You mean you don’t know what’s in the June 2009 Maths-Whizz Tutoring Student Update? Have you been hiding in a toilet roll?
In truth, even some Whizzers don’t know the full glory of the improvements we’ve made, so for your edification I list them. Read on for more:
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