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Comment by jergason | Hacker News Reader

"My daughter and I have a bedtime routine where we read a story and also make up mathematical word problems that we solve together."

I am a late-bloomer in mathematics, by way of computer science. I love my parents and had a wonderful childhood, but I grew up thinking math was boring, and my interest in my high school and early college courses was shallow at best. I think it is wonderful that the author spends time with his daughter and also gives her some math practice. I feel like my life would have been different if I had grown up liking math instead of coming to it late.

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I wish he gave an example of what sorts of things he and his daughter come up with (and her approx age or grade level)

This is a story about Tory and the leaky canoe. Tory loves rowing her canoe in the pond (while wearing a certified floatation device and carrying the proper safety whistle, of course), and she rows at least 2 hours a day. Unfortunately, today Tory found 2 large holes in the bottom of her 200 gallon, 60 pound canoe, and she's afraid she won't be able to row for the day. Assuming the two holes in the canoe are approximately 2 inches in diameter, and Tory weighs 75 pounds, how long will Tory be able to row before she has to utilize her safety whistle and flotation device?

Tory is paddling in fresh water, and her force is distributed equally between the two holes.

You know, just a run-of-the-mill math question for a 3rd grader...

>200 gallon, 60 pound

Is it 4 score hogshead moons per gross of firkin?

You jest, but unit measurement differences are very similar to radix differences. Being able to think in multiple units/bases is a useful skill.

    kragen@inexorable:~$ units
    2411 units, 71 prefixes, 33 nonlinear units

    You have: 4 score hogshead moons per gross of firkin
    Unknown unit 'moons'
    You have:

Were you thinking lunar months, moon masses, moon radii, moon apogee...?

I was thinking "moons" as a period of time, so a lunar month : [time][volume]/[volume]

As in "We'll see 3 more moons before yon mountain dons his snowy cape." or some such yokel-ese.

Well, fourscore hogshead per gross of firkin is 3.8̄ (i.e. 35/9), so fourscore hogshead-moons per gross of firkin is about 115 days.

It was intended as a witty remark, I only parsed for unitary conformance not for value and didn't bother to answer the question.

Perhaps you'd like to do it and provide the answer in these units?

the answer is trivial and is left as an exercise to the reader.

I'm going to include something that currently relates to them. For example, my two oldest are loosing teeth, and of course they're looking forward for the cash they'll be making from the tooth fairy. Maybe I'll start small... they gets $1 for every tooth. So I can start in the way of finances since they're already planning on purchasing toys. Maybe the problem could be, how many teeth they need to loose in order to purchase a particular toy. If it's a small toy, how much savings are they going to have left?. Will they share the cost? How much does each currently have, etc. Very basic at first, but that's pretty much the idea I think. Better than my education: 1) Go to school, 2) don't get in trouble, 3) Do you homework, without any involvement whatsoever.

Yeah, I have three little boys that care nothing but outdo each other (oldest will start 1st grade this year). Anything that is a competition to them gets their attention, so I'm going to try to find some content/ideas online.

I also became interested in math at a later age, and also thought it was boring at first. Most of anything, I'm pretty sure it was due to lack of direction from my parents... but can't blame them, they didn't know better.

..but I do.

Just came to post a comment along these lines. I'm going to do this with my daughter tonight.

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