Author Archives: Paul Gafni

Check out this video to see how to play Hackenbush: If you want to play this game, I suggest having one person draw any starting position they’d like. The other player chooses colors and goes first. I find this game to be much more fun to analyze than it is to play–there seems to be aContinue reading “Hackenbush On a Number Line [Part 1]”

Richard Feynman paints really elegant pictures of the way the world words. Here’s a taste.

March 14: Pi Day April 4: Julia Robinson Festival April 12th: Bellevue Sunday Classes Start April 13th-17th: Seattle Math for Love Spring Break Camp June 22-26: Seattle Math for Love Camp June 29-3: Bellevue Math for Love Camp July 6-10: Seattle Math for Love Camp July 13-17: Bellevue Math for Love Camp See Math forContinue reading “Save the Dates: 2015 Math Events”

Euclid: The Game offers a modern and novel way to play with many of the fundamental ideas of classical geometry. Work your way through the traditional compass and straight-edge constructions, earning tools appropriately–once you can construct an equilateral triangle, you get an “equilateral triangle” tool. And once you can find a midpoint, you get aContinue reading “Euclid: The Game (Geometry)”

Project Euler is a series of programming challenges asking you to solve harder and harder math problems. Can you find the 100th prime? Can you find the sum of the first 100 primes? Can you find the 100th prime that is also a Fibonacci number? You can complete these challenges in any language you like.

K-12 Unsolved Problems List Nobody knows the answers to these problems, because nobody has ever solved them. Maybe you can crack one?

Parents often ask me where they can find more of “this type of stuff.” Here’s a couple of my favorites: Math for Love Lessons New York Times Numberplay Puzzles Julia Robinson Festival Problems

I often cite this video from Vi Hart as the reason I do what I do. Before I knew the name Martin Gardner and long before I knew about Math Circles, I was teaching ideas from Vi Hart to homeschool kids who got together for a once-a-week class centered around Math Olympiad (MOEMS) contests. HerContinue reading “Doodling Stars”

This week I recorded and posted my first ever video lessons. My first project was a series on Nim, a game that I’ve been interested in for the past couple of years. You can check it out here. I have a couple of ideas for other videos to make, but I’d love to hear some requests/suggestions!Continue reading “Nim Video Series”