Number Sense and Nonsense: Building Math Creativity and Confidence Through Number Play
To all our children I hope they will enjoy figuring out the difference between number sense and
Acknowledgments I want to thank the many educators and authors whose ideas I have adapted for this book Several of their books are listed in the Bibliography In particu lar I am indebted to the Family Math book for the activity Number Rectangles on page 16 Beatrice Lumpkin informed me about the evidence for the concept of zero in ancient Egypt The two headed sheep on page 2 is described in Finders Keepers by Stephen J Gould and Rosamond Wolff Purcell Nor ton 1992 Credit for permission to reprint The Monkey’s Age page 75 goes to Gary Hendren and the Missouri Council of Teachers of Mathematics Bul letin March
Introduction A Note to the Reader This book is about numbers all kinds of numbers Numbers have different personalities just like peo ple Numbers have relationships just as people do A person might be a daughter or son a sister or broth er a cousin and a friend Numbers are also related to other numbers in various ways Some ways of connecting numbers make good number sense Others may make no sense at all they are just nonsense In this book you will meet young people who are trying to tell the difference between number sense and nonsense they Often need some common sense to help them decide I think you will enjoy their discussions and debates You may want to have such discussions with your classmates friends and even grown ups These discussions will help you to build up your own number sense You will develop a good head for numbers the ability to see patterns in groups of numbers and an appreciation of how useful numbers are and how much fun you can have with numbers Most of the topics in each chapter include ideas for activities that you can carry out either alone or with other people There are also many questions for you to think about questions that sometimes have
