I'm really excited about how well one of my new lesson ideas for fifth grade CS is working out.
I teach them to count in binary early in the class which they LOVE. In the new lesson I have seven sets of cards with numbers and symbols on them from:
binary
hexadecimal
base 3
base 3 but with different symbols
base 5 but with different symbols
cuneiform
decimal
Each set of cards contains numbers from 1 to 150. Students put them in order and match symbols of the same value.
It's chaos.
This entry was edited (1 month ago)
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myrmepropagandist
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •myrmepropagandist
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •I have a worksheet where you add, subtract, multiply and divide words in HEX and fifth graders find this VERY amusing.
Things like D6FD-CAFE=BFF
(If you know of any good hex math problems like this please share as I collect them. )
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myrmepropagandist
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •I asked chatGPT to make some problems for me. It couldn't understand what I was asking for.
Also they have put up a new paywall today you get five chats a day. Let's see how many people sign up.
(I will write a program to make some amusing problems for me, I already have an English dictionary I use for my "wordle cheating" programs... this should be fun.)
Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •myrmepropagandist
in reply to Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫ • • •@petealexharris
I will not be accused of ignoring this tech and not giving it a "chance" --but yeah.
Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •I don't feel I need to give it a chance. If it gets as good as promised, there's no reason for me to learn how to work around its deficiencies now; it'll just be directly and easily usable by asking it questions naturally without any training or practice.
If it never does get that good, there isn't any reason for me to use it.
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Hypolite Petovan
in reply to Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫ • • •@Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫ I fully agree with you and at the same time I'm glad I'm not in a position where I would have to answer inquisitive questions about giving the tech a chance like @myrmepropagandist seems to be in.
I read enough about toxic sludge to not want to give it a chance, and I don't have to prove anything to anyone about trying out toxic sludge.
George B
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •A Flock of Beagles
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •myrmepropagandist
in reply to A Flock of Beagles • • •@burnitdown
Not messing with that without a big multiplication table at hand.
A Flock of Beagles
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •Noodlemaz
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •Bill Ricker
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •I trust you used the old joke about why CS folks exchange gifts on Halloween 🎃 🎁.
Because Oct 31 = Dec 25 😄
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scmbradley
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •Bill Ricker
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •a quick scan with English dictionary words finds exactly one triple that work as a hexadecimal sum.
BED + BE = CAB
Many school districts/admins would frown upon double entendre invited by
BED + 12₁₆ = BED + 18₁₀ = BFF
(but at least it reserves adultery for adults?)
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Albert Cardona
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •Relatedly:
>>> int('111', base=37)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ValueError: int() base must be >= 2 and <= 36, or 0
What. So is there a standard library function for converting number bases in python?
#python
Hypolite Petovan
in reply to Albert Cardona • • •shortstories
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •Bill Ricker
in reply to shortstories • • •Why not?
shortstories
in reply to Bill Ricker • • •@n1vux
The writing system has so many rules and symbols it might be more difficult than Egyptian Hieroglyphics which are more difficult than modern Chinese with it's pictograms
And also more difficult than ancient Greek, ancient Hebrew or any ancient form of any modern language that is based on a ancient dead language
Where the ancient language forms are usually more difficult than the modern forms for the same language
Is why not
myrmepropagandist
in reply to shortstories • • •@shortstories @n1vux
cuneiform numbers aren’t bad at all. though it’s disturbing how they have place value but no zero
shortstories
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •@n1vux
Try writing a simple sentence with a subject object and verb in cuneiform and you will not find it easy even if the numbers are easy
Zumbador
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •Discovering that there are different ways of counting really blew my mind. The first time I encountered this was in playing Riven, I think? One of the puzzles requires a base 5 numbering system.
I'm trying to articulate why I find this so important - something about realising how something that you just accept without interrogating it like the decimal system, is actually something somebody made up, and that other systems are available.
Phosphenes
in reply to Zumbador • • •@Zumbador
They taught us other bases in the 1970s when I was a kid. I wonder if it fell out of favor and then came back?
You could eat cereal on Saturday morning in 1973 while Schoolhouse Rock taught you base 12 between cartoons:
youtube.com/watch?v=pqGyUvZP0Z…
- YouTube
www.youtube.commyrmepropagandist
in reply to Phosphenes • • •@Phosphenes @Zumbador
It has never fallen out of favor with those of us in math who want young people to have a good foundation in discrete mathematics?
myrmepropagandist
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •@Phosphenes @Zumbador
Also, there is a big gap between being aware that "computers use a language of 1s and 0s" and really understanding how that is built in to the way these machines work. Everything must be encoded and decoded. So, I think this concept of encoding and representation is very important.
Not so that you can read binary, but rather so you have a clear sense of what it means to use layers of algorithms to take something like an image and make it into binary.
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myrmepropagandist
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •@Phosphenes @Zumbador
Computers give the impression of working with the analog, so much of the way we work with them obscures their fundamentally discrete nature.
But under the hood? that's still how it works.
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toerror
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •Me being something of a literallist responded : "Oh... I don't really have to use binary very often". He looked at me rather strangely.
John Maxwell
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •Exactly. I qualify as an expert low level computer engineer, and I very distinctly remember the point in my education when the layering snapped into focus and I understood eeeeeverything.
Not everything literally (I've spent much of the intervening mumble years refining and adding understanding, and there's still much undigested) but I had the conceptual framework that everything else has slotted into, and I knew it.
Len
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •teach em to count in binary on their fingers!
... there's no real reason to do that, but it *is* fun, and means you can count to 255 on two hands. 1023 if you're more dextrous than I.
Ehay2k
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •This is such a great thread.
#math #teaching #basenumbers
Gobabu
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •Farthings, shillings, pences, pounds, crowns, sovereigns, guineas and florins ?
Base twelve, eleven, two, four, oh darn...
Bill Ricker
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •I taught our kid to count in binary on fingers.
Her math teachers universally would let her "flip the bird" to annoying classmates since she counted up
"One." cnnn8
"Two." cnn8n
"Three." cnn88
"FOUR!" cn8nn
and they just adored the mathiness of it, and allowing the mathy transgressive expression was encouraging playful maths.
(I never used the thumbs 👍 myself, as with Hexadecimal representation, 4bits per hand was optimal. But yes using both thumbs, could count to 1023.)
Bill Ricker
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •3Jane Tessier Ashpool
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •myrmepropagandist
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •“why don’t the ancient ones have a zero?”
twas not invented then, my child
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myrmepropagandist
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •I just added in the cuneiform with the other number systems on a whim, not really thinking about the implications of it not having a zero (really, I forgot that they didn’t have zero it is a base 60 system, They *do* use place value, but with great ambiguity: it’s one of the things that makes translating old numeric tablets difficult.)
This caused many excellent questions!
Wiley Wiggins
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •llewelly
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •not obscene, just deeply concerning
in reply to llewelly • • •Sensitive content
Alexander The 1st
in reply to not obscene, just deeply concerning • • •Sensitive content
esoteric programming language
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)myrmepropagandist
in reply to Alexander The 1st • • •Sensitive content
@AT1ST @apophis @llewelly
This is unspeakable.
Steve Gisselbrecht
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •Roger BW 😷
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •myrmepropagandist
in reply to Roger BW 😷 • • •@RogerBW
no... oh dear.
Bill Ricker
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •{-1, 0, +1} is an alternative, balanced ternary system to the usual {0, 1 ,2 }, which can be used for electronics but mostly isn't.
Eliot Lash
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •cool! But don't forget that ancient mesoamerican civilizations like the Maya did have a numeral for zero which is often glossed over in eurocentric histories. I'm not sure exactly when this developed but I think it was around the dawn of the common era.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_num…
numeral system
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)myrmepropagandist
in reply to Eliot Lash • • •@Eliot_L
The cuneiform system is VERY old. We are talking 2900BC, so the Maya zero, is much later. But also probably independent of the zero from India.