Engage: Level 1: Student Book and Workbook (+ CD-ROM)

A discussion of informal logic is as common in elementary mathematics courses as is a discussion of Icelandic sagas. Puzzles, games, and riddles aren't discussed-in many cases, I'm convinced, because it's too easy for bright ten-year-olds to best their teachers. The intimate relationship between mathematics and such games has been explored most engagingly by mathematics writer Martin Gardner, whose many charming books and Scientific American columns would make exciting outside reading for high school or college students (were they but assigned), as might mathematician George Polya's How to Solve It or Mathematics and Plausible Reading. A delightful book with something of the flavor of these others, but at an elementary level, is I Hate Mathematics by Marilyn Burns. It's full of what elementary math textbooks rarely have-heuristic tips on problem solving and whimsy. Instead, too many textbooks still list names and terms, with few if any illustrations. They note, for example, that addition is said to be an associative operation since (a + b) + c = a + (b + c) ...»