Awhile back, I wrote a post about one of my favorite books, What If. I have thought often of this book and how it represents lifelong learning in real life! The book was a reward for my two youngest children – for achieving their learning goals for the week. They excited read this book, competing over who would get to have it until they came to an agreement that they would read it together.
My oldest (and grown adult) son came to visit. This same book was sitting on the coffee table where it had been momentarily placed between reading frenzies. Of course, he couldn’t help himself being drawn in by the enticing graphics on the page. Who wouldn’t be drawn in by this cover? He five-fingered the text. (Five-fingered -our family colorful vocabulary for using his five fingers to take something that wasn’t his!) The book was back in turbulence as it was fought over between my now three children!
This book is simply a phenomenal feat -drawing people into scientific probability. It was created by Randall Munroe who created a place on his website for people to submit their questions. He calls it “a sort of Dear Abby for mad scientists.”
In loving this book, I searched for an exciting way to introduce mathematical problems to my teenagers -homeschooled. This search began when my teenage daughter who excels at math vehemently stated with a foot stomp about how much she hated math and saw no purpose to continue! My heart sunk, possessing a love of math myself. That is when I stumbled upon -quite literally – a beautiful post about Professor Povey’s Perplexing Problems. I am most grateful for this new book and the blog who directed me toward it.
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