How to Play the 24 Game in Math

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Jimmy Chang and I've been teaching college math for almost a decade, and we're here to talk about how to play the twenty four game in mathematics. Now, it is not about the t.v. show unfortunately, but it can be just as fun. So, let me explain to you the objective of the game. The twenty four game is actually a numbers game in which you pick four numbers and the objective is to figure out what math operations can you use so that those four numbers will give you twenty four. Now, the operations are, if you'll remember, are addition, subtraction, multiplication and division and you want to pick three out of those four operations to use those four numbers. Now, I've given you an example, there are many, many, many examples on how to do this, but the four numbers I've given you are ten, two, one, and five. As you can tell, they're not in any particular order per say, but the operations I've chosen are multiplication, subtraction, and addition. Now, if you work the operations, again keeping in mind your dear aunt Sally, the oder of operations, you'll see that ten times two is twenty, twenty minus one is nineteen, and nineteen plus five is going to give you twenty four. Now, to translate that to a classroom setting, you have to come up of course, with four numbers that will total twenty four using those operations. But, you're only going to choose three. Now, depending on the class that you have, you can either break up the class up into individuals or teams and then the objective is to have the individuals, slash teams, play the twenty four game. Give them numbers and tell them which operations must be used, so it gives them something to work with, and then the first team, or individual to come up with the right answer, gets a point, or a few points depending on how long you want to play the game. And, when the first person has the correct solution, give them those points, but for others that aren't able to get the correct solution, then take the time to explain how they can get the correct answer, so that they could do it right the future times that they do it. And, then; you can play the game as many times as you want, you can set a points plateau so the first team or individual to get a certain number of points at the end of a game wins. But, it's a great exercise to help students understand how operations work, and to work with various numbers around mathematics. So, I'm Jimmy Chang and that is how you play the twenty four game."