PoSWW 37: Squaring the Circles

This one comes courtesy of Mystery Fred. The diagram above is for a Circle Gaps Brainteaser, and appeared online last week as part of Double Helix, CSIRO‘s science magazine for kids. The text for the brainteaser (as if it matters) is as follows:

What is the area of the orange star in the centre? The blue circles each have an area of 3 square centimetres, and the big square has sides that are 4 centimetres long.

A comment on the post makes it clear that the choices of sidelength and area were purposefully made.

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PoSWW 31: Really?

Honestly, we cannot believe it. We’ve checked it ten times and we still cannot believe. It’s from the 2022 Specialist Mathematics Exam 2 (not online), and nothing beyond the discussion on the exam post needs to be added. But, after last year’s screw up, and anyway, it has to be posted.

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New Cur 1 + PoSWW 29: Cut Down in One’s Prime

As part of writing our WWW article, we forced ourselves, finally, to look at ACARA’s new Mathematics Curriculum. Jesus, it’s bad. Like village idiot bad.

We’ll start a post in the near future,* compiling the various nonsenses, new and old, and including aspects readers have already pointed out on this post. One new piece of stupidity, however, seems worthy of special mention.

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PoSWW 28: The Intersection of Feminism With PISA

A few days ago Greg Ashman handballed an article to us, suggesting we might enjoy it, although clearly he meant “enjoy” it. The (paywalled) article, just published in the journal Research in Mathematics Education, is titled

Intersectional feminism to reenvision mathematical literacies & precarity

Yeah, you don’t have to read the article. We did.

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PoSWW 27: That Does Not Compete

This one’s from AMT‘s 2007 upper primary Australian Mathematics Competition. Yes, it’s a while ago, and we are not aware that such BODMAS nonsense has appeared since on the AMC, and of course such BODMAS nonsense is endemic elsewhere. But we hold, or at least held, AMT to a higher standard.

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