wishful thinking- what does that mean? well i often tell my students, if there is something in life you want, just make it happen, and deal with the consequences. now this applies to the ordinary curriculum.
How To Add Fractions Pdf, for example, an algebra question, you might need to solve "x/2 plus 1/3 equals 1/5" or something. and the wish here could be,
"gosh, i wish there weren't any fractions in this problem." in which case, that's what you wish, make it happen! how can we get rid of the fractions? i guess what we'll do is, say, multiple 3 by 2, double everything. so "x/2 times 2" would be"x plus 2/3 equals 2/5". and then if i still don't like my fractions, maybe i could triple everything,then multiple everything by 5.
life would be grand. but engaging in wishful thinking is a great problem solving strategy in and of itself. for example, here's a very famous problem. it appears in many problem solving books. it's believed to originate as an interviewquestions for certain software companies. the idea is, here are 3 blobs - a, b, c, stuck at the top of the wall here. and three more blobs labeled a, b, c.
the question is, can you connect each a... each pair of a's, each pair of b's, each pair of c's with lines that do not intersect? try it. okay, i connect a to a. no worries. i can connect b to bbut i have to go around. and then it seems like i'm stuck about the c's. so you [inaudible] for awhile and feel like you're stuck.
so what's a good problem solving strategy here? well, engage in wishful thinking. at this point i could tell you that it would be so much easier if i had a, b, c as before. the b down at the bottom. what i don't like is these a's and c's and their order. i wish they were switched around because then the problem would be very easy to solve. what does that do for me?
can i now take the answer that was very good and delightful and somehow mold this so that the a's and the c's actually do merge and come back around to where they were meant to be in the original problem? if i maybe imagine those cords kind of like elastic bands and then maybe you can see now a solution to the original problem. wishful thinking, great stuff, very powerful stuff. thanks for watching. for more curriculum inspiration material, go to our website.
lots of great stuff there.
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