Category Archives: games

Visualizing nim-like games

Posted on August 16, 2012 by

Inspired by the comments on this post, I’ve had some ideas brewing for a while—I’m just only now getting around to writing them up. The topic is visualizing winning strategies for "nim-like" games. What do I mean by that? By … Continue reading →

Posted in games, pattern, pictures | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Wythoff’s game at Three-Cornered Things

Posted on June 10, 2012 by

I’ve really been enjoying Zachary Abel’s series of posts on Wythoff’s game [Wythoff’s Game: Red or Blue?; A Golden Observation; The “Fibonacci”est String; Wythoff’s Formula], over on his blog Three-Cornered Things. The Fibonacci numbers show up in the strangest places! … Continue reading →

Posted in fibonacci, games, links | Tagged | 7 Comments

The wonderful world of Mike Reilly

Posted on June 14, 2011 by

The other day I received an email from Mike Reilly, who introduced himself as a professional game and puzzle inventor, and suggested that I might be interested in taking a look at a few of his web sites. I wasn’t … Continue reading →

Posted in games, links, people, puzzles | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Vi Hart's math doodles

Posted on December 14, 2010 by

Vi Hart’s math doodle videos have been making the rounds of the math blogosphere (I heard of them from Denise at Let’s Play Math!). There are four videos so far and they are well worth watching — inspirational, creative, full … Continue reading →

Posted in games, humor, links, people, video | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

The mathematics of human knots

Posted on November 19, 2010 by

Have you ever played “human knot”? It seems to be a common icebreaker/team-building sort of exercise (just do a Google search for “human knot” and you’ll find quite a few pages discussing it). Everyone stands in a circle, then reaches … Continue reading →

Posted in games, people, probability | Tagged , , , , , | 9 Comments

Manufactoria

Posted on May 25, 2010 by

A friend of mine just pointed me to a most excellent puzzle game, Manufactoria, wherein you build little machines to test robots. For now I won’t give away the secret of what real math/computer science topic the game teaches you, … Continue reading →

Posted in games, links, logic, programming, puzzles | Tagged , , | 17 Comments

Divisor nim

Posted on February 3, 2010 by

Yesterday in math club I had the students play a game which I dimly remember seeing somewhere but forget where. Since I don’t know what it is really called, I’m calling it “divisor nim”. Here’s how it works: The players … Continue reading →

Posted in games, number theory, pattern | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

MangaHigh.com

Posted on December 28, 2009 by

I recently received an email suggesting that I check out the website MangaHigh.com, which has interactive math-based games for elementary through high school students. Now, I am generally pretty skeptical of such things. For one, they are usually of relatively … Continue reading →

Posted in games, links, teaching | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

The Christmas Price Index

Posted on December 14, 2009 by

I’ve written before about the mathematics of the traditional song “The Twelve Days of Christmas”. For a different angle, check out PNC Bank’s “Christmas Price Index”: apparently, every year they compute the total cost of all the gifts in the … Continue reading →

Posted in games, links, video | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

minim

Posted on November 4, 2009 by

A fun game I discovered recently, minim. In each level you start out with a network of numbered nodes, and the object is to successively combine the nodes according to certain mathematical rules in order to end up with only … Continue reading →

Posted in games, links | Tagged , | 1 Comment