Friday, January 7, 2022

Post 3 of Wally's Math Books: The Solution to the Grapefruit Problem

In my previous post I noted that one of the Wally's textbooks was explicity written to cover all of what was on the New York Regents exams, which still exist today - although the ones for January 2022 have been cancelled due to COVID-19.  What about these exams is so enduring that thay have lasted since 1865?  The exams have been cancelled multiple times more than once during the pandemic and that makes me wonder.  Are these exams really all that important? And if not, why administer them at all?  But I digress.

Here is the problem I had posted previously.  Did you try to solve it or give it to some students to try to solve?


Since I am a math teacher, I decided to approach this from an algebraic perspective. But then I got an equation that requires the quadratic formula and so I switched to using Desmos.  After you students try to solve it, see if they can follow my paper/tech combo solution.