Skip Counting

I think it was Joseph who noticed that from September to November our family has children ages 5-10-15-20. Cool!

Dinner and a Math Challenge

Well, the February meals are under way. Last night Daniel served BLT hot dogs, baked beans, winter fruit salad, and tossed salad, followed by homemade vanilla ice cream with bittersweet chocolate shavings. I did persuade him to buy the hot dog buns--the cook book had a recipe for homemade.

The hot dogs were simple but good. Hot dogs (we splurged on Nathan's) were each wrapped in a slice of bacon and then baked at 375* for 45 minutes. I didn't believe they would take so long, but they really did need the full time. They were served with diced tomato, shredded lettuce, and mayo (as well as the usual condiments), but I think they were better without.

We make ice cream by cooking the custardy base a day ahead so the eggs are safe (former dietitian bacteria phobe!) and everything has time to chill. On Friday this gave me a chance to give Daniel a different sort of math assignment--recipe manipulation. It went something like this:

The recipe calls for 1 2/3 cups of milk. The texture of ice cream is strongly affected by appropriate fat content, so we need to use the whole milk the recipe is assuming. However, we don't keep whole milk in the house. So figure out how much low fat milk and half-and-half we need to use to "make" whole milk. Make the calculations, but also explain how you would measure it in real life.

Given:
1 cup low fat milk= 2.5 g fat
1 cup whole milk= 8 g fat
1 cup half-and-half= 24 g fat

If you're interested in giving this a try, the answer is in the comments, along with the follow up question that I gave to Daniel.

By the way, the ice cream was delicious! We usually us The Ultimate Ice Cream Book, given to us by those wonderful Nelsons.

The Math Wizzes Strike Out

I love math, and I'm good at it. Daniel has a math talent, too. But today our brains were not functioning in high gear.

Dan's been working through the Algebra 1 Honors Book, and today's lesson was about solving problems with multiple variables. You know, you're given a word problem and need to write the equation(s) and then solve. Knowing how to translate a question into an equation is actually the most important part of this. In math books you can sometimes fiddle around to find the right answer, but in real life the numbers aren't always tidy, so the proper set-up is vital.

Anyway, problem #3 had four variables, and so needed four equations. Daniel tried it, then called for help because the answer was obviously wrong. I helped and it was still wrong. We tried again and it was still wrong. We looked at the solution (thank goodness this answer key SHOWS THE WORK!), and realized we had made the same careless error several times. A truly humbling and time consuming experience. Math was over for the day!

Read on only if you really enjoy algebra:

"Super Suites Hotel has four rates for their 250 basic rooms. Senior citizens pay $35 a night. Businesses pay $45, and coupon-holders pay $40. The standard rate is $50 per night if none of these other rates apply. On New Year's Eve, the hotel's room rates brought in $8640 in income.

The number of rooms sold to senior citizens that night was 10 fewer than the number of standard rooms. The number of business rooms was 8 fewer than the number of coupon-holder rooms sold. Also, the sale of coupon-holder rooms was 10 times less than the number of standard rooms sold. How many rooms were empty on New Year's Eve at Super Suites?"

If you're interested in solving this, put your four starter equations and final answer in the comment section. I'll put the correct answers there later. As a start, we used S for senior, B for business, C for coupon-holder, and R for regular (standard). Our mistake was getting senior and standard partially mixed up--beware!