I am living proof of the myth that only some people are "math people." For years, I suffered under that delusion -- and that I was definitely not one of those people. But things changed in high school. I won't go into the long, boring story, but I realized that I enjoy math. And while I am not a lightning fast mental problem solver, the logic and patterns fascinate me. That is why I started collecting fun math sites for my students, and made this public list of Math Sites That Won't Make You Fall Asleep. I also started following fascinating people who tweet about math (#MTBOS is a wonderful way to start), which includes Sunil Singh (@MathGarden). Singh is a Content Writer for Mathigon.org, one of the Math Sites That Won't Make You Fall Asleep. While I've included Mathigon on the list, I didn't notice the "Almanac of Interesting Numbers" until Singh tweeted about it.
Although I don't believe that only some people have a "math gene," I do know that there are some of us who find math far more intriguing than others. I've had students like that, and if you have them in your class you should show them this interactive number line that will give them amazing facts about numbers. I found the easiest way to navigate the number line is to put a number in the search box and click on the zoom in/zoom out magnifying glasses at the bottom of the page. That's how I discovered that 40,585 is the sum of the factorials of its digits (4! +0! + 5! +8! +5!) and that 25 is the smallest square that can be written as the sum of two squares.
If I don't publish any more posts this week, I think you can guess what I'm doing instead...
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