{"id":21879,"date":"2013-10-14T22:19:58","date_gmt":"2013-10-14T22:19:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wp\/?p=21879"},"modified":"2013-10-14T22:19:58","modified_gmt":"2013-10-14T22:19:58","slug":"day-287-the-day-this-blog-became-useful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/2013\/10\/14\/day-287-the-day-this-blog-became-useful\/","title":{"rendered":"Day 287: The Day This Blog Became Useful"},"content":{"rendered":"

The title… well it’s about a quiz<\/a> on BBC Four<\/a>. Some people call it Only Connect<\/a><\/em>. Because that’s its name. A few days ago<\/a> I posted about the Lazy Caterer’s Sequence<\/a> and this was the answer to a question<\/a> on the quiz. I knew it instantly because of writing for this blog. That’s rare that is.<\/p>\n

A few other things have been done tonight, although not a lot overall.<\/p>\n

I spent a fair bit of it searching the computer downstairs for an old email. I need to hunt down an attachment for a thing at work but I fear it has gone, I have run out of ideas for search terms now. I’ll have to think some more.<\/p>\n

The rest of the time was spent watching more of the second series of Fresh Meat<\/a><\/em>. This was on Channel 4<\/a> ages ago but I’ve never made time to watch it. Just have one episode left now.<\/p>\n

I also made a resource for the TES, a small thing based around ways to help children remember the terms parallel, perpendicular and the main feature of line symmetry using letters within the words. A simple idea but I’ve found it’s been effective in the past.<\/p>\n

Finally, I have come across a few maths puzzles<\/a> lately based on the old Eleven+ test, a system used for entry to grammar schools<\/a> until the mid 1970s. It is still used to this day in a slightly different form. However, this particular puzzle grabbed me today as it is different to most questions used in schools today.<\/p>\n

Twice one hundred and sixty-eight added to four times another number gives a total of four hundred and eighty. What is the other number?<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

[via 7Puzzle Blog<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Firstly, the numbers are written in words. That is fairly rare is testing these days.<\/p>\n

Secondly, there are three steps required to solve it: doubling 168, subtracting that answer from 480 in order to find the number that has been multiplied by four… again, two step questions are the norm now.<\/p>\n

Thirdly, it opens up an avenue of exploration – can children brought up on a diet of two step questions and different problems solve puzzles like this? Well, in short, not really. Only a couple of my class got anywhere near the answer this morning and for a lot of them it was just too difficult. Now, factor in that my class are not eleven, they are nine and ten, but the actual maths isn’t that difficult really. I think it will be valuable in the longer term to keep throwing this type of puzzle at them just to see their development.<\/p>\n

\"Enhanced<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The title… well it’s about a quiz on BBC Four. Some people call it Only Connect. Because that’s its name. A few days ago I posted about the Lazy Caterer’s Sequence and this was the answer to a question on the quiz. I knew it instantly because of writing for this blog. That’s rare that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,35,18,33],"tags":[383,1218,1744,2475,2488,2493,2523,3169],"class_list":["post-21879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2","category-blogging-hobbies","category-maths","category-work","tag-bbc-four","tag-games","tag-lazy-caterers-sequence","tag-puzzle","tag-question","tag-quiz","tag-recreation","tag-video-games","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6OeSW-5GT","jetpack-related-posts":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21879\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}