December 8

By | December 8, 2009

Here’s a question on last week’s math homework for our 2nd-grader: Mrs. Leary has chickens and dogs in her backyard.  She counts 15 heads and 42 feet.  How many dogs does Mrs. Leary have? How long would it take you to figure that out?

Here’s the Book of Philippians in a new way.  This group has recorded Paul’s 13 Letters in rap.

The Bible vs. Joseph Smith – it’s not out yet, but this teaser has me very interested.

Are you savvy in how you use your credit card?  I wouldn’t recommend everything mentioned in this WSJ article, but there may be some things you haven’t considered.

9 thoughts on “December 8

  1. Khoi To

    Thanks for the info… You can actually watch the whole movie “The Bible vs. Joseph Smith” (66:33) online, on the same site.

    Reply
  2. Grace

    6 dogs,9 chickens, in 6 or 7 minutes.
    I beat my husband in figuring it out, too, and that’s the real accomplishment! :D

    Reply
  3. Craig Dunning

    Actually, Mrs. Leary miscounted the number of heads due to the chickens moving about. There were actually 14 heads: 7 dogs and 7 chickens.

    I figured this out in less than 30 seconds.

    Reply
  4. Todd Bolen

    Khoi – the movie isn’t finished yet. Perhaps you’re thinking of “The Bible vs. the Book of Mormon.”

    Grace – my daughter solved it in about one minute.

    Craig – you were the first to finish, but you failed the assignment.

    All – that this problem is challenging is why I mentioned it. After I explained it to my daughter (so she understood the question), she quickly figured it out. Apparently she learned the method at school. She drew 15 circles to represent animals. Then she put two lines (for feet) on each. Then she put two more lines on each until she ran out. This isn’t the algebra way, and it wouldn’t work for high numbers, but I was impressed that she knew quickly how to solve it.

    Reply
  5. Bill

    Hey, Todd. Your daughter and her teacher both get an A for creative problem solving, but the SAT will also care very much about “the algebra way”. I hope/trust that in Plano you’re getting both. In some districts, it’s merely the circles and feet, as a method to cheat.

    Reply
  6. Jennica-Ayelet

    It’s terrible. Sometimes when I’m tutoring my third grade student I have to say, “I don’t know what this is asking. We’ll come back to this one.” And I’m good at math, too! Oh well…

    Reply
  7. Joshua Clutterham

    When you and Bethany figure out the math problem, try this one:
    Mrs. Leary buys gold and silver bullion bars from Amazon.com with her credit card. She counts 15 bars in her cart. When she is through shopping, she proceeds to checkout her $42,000 dollar purchase. If silver bullion bars are worth $2,000 each and gold, $4,000 each. How many of each bars will she receive in 3-5 days, and what will she do with all those milleage points?
    …i bet those credit card scoundrels were counting chickens and dogs when they were 6 too :)…if their teachers only knew…

    Reply
  8. Ruth

    two dogs…less than one minute…but i was a teacher and know the math trick for these…draw legs first :)

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *