There was a lot of activity in Ireland during Maths Week this year and it is positive to see how people are beginning to see the huge importance of Maths in everyday life. I decided to try and get some of the parents in my school involved in the fun of Maths by posting a simple Maths Problem on our school’s Facebook page each day of the week to see if it would generate any discussion.

I decided to use a mix of logic puzzles and traditional maths problems. For example, on the first day, I posted:

It was Nancy’s first day at school. The teacher suggested that it would be a good idea for each child to meet every other child in the class. The teacher said, “When you meet, please shake hands and introduce yourself by name.” If there were 11 children in the class, how many total handshakes were there?

It was brilliant to see the conversation that flowed and how parents were using great mathematical language and logic to solve the problem. Throughout the week, I posed other problems, which generated more conversation.

I can see myself using Facebook more often during events, such as Seachtain na Gaeilge, Book Week and maybe some festivals, to engage conversation. It’s a simple and free way to involve parents in education. Below are the rest of the puzzles I posted:

1. You are on an island and there are three crates of fruit that have washed up in front of you. One crate contains only apples. One crate contains only oranges. The other crate contains both apples and oranges. Each crate is labeled. One reads “apples”, one reads “oranges”, and one reads “apples and oranges”. You know that NONE of the crates have been labeled correctly – they are all wrong. If you can only take out and look at just one of the pieces of fruit from just one of the crates, how can you label ALL of the crates correctly?
2. Ricky had a bag containing colorful marbles. The colors are red, green and blue. The total number of marbles he had in his bag is 60. There are 4 times as many red marbles as green marbles. 6 more blue marbles than green marbles. How many marbles of each color did Ricky have?
3. Jack sells apples in the market. First day he sells 1234 apples. Second day he sells 1456 apples. On the third day, he sells 134 less than the second day. How many apples are sold in three days?
4. A Man works on the 10th floor and always takes the elevator down to ground level at the end of the day. Yet every morning he only takes the elevator to the 7th floor and walks up the stairs to the 10th floor, even when is in a hurry. Why?

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