Math Vlog?

I've always been driven by incentives, which I can thank to my wonderful parents and video games... and money. I regret never volunteering much, and whenever I get around to having a munchkin or two, I will attempt to instill a sense of volunteerism in them. This is obviously a lot easier said than done, especially for my lazy and self-centered ass!

Over the past few years, I have become pretty good at using incentives to force me into doing positive things. I've never had good study or work habits, so being a substitute teacher has a chance of really flopping. As long as I don't look up jobs, I don't have to work! This is almost better than Dr. Chako's gig! My excuse today for not taking a job was rain, and not wanting to spend four hours in a car to get to and from school. I can see my excuses getting questionable in a hurry, especially if I get another season's pass to go skiing...

In order to get myself out of the house and working, I have set one rule down so far. If I don't get a sub job, I have to go for a run. This is pretty good incentive to get a job for a non-runner (coupled with the money incentive for working). Also, I am toying with the idea of creating a math YouTube channel, and for each day I don't sub, I have to post a video. I am unsure how exactly the YouTube channel will work, but I follow a few YouTube channels, which update daily. I figure if I post enough videos and check out other math vlogs, I can squeeze in to whatever math teacher vlog community there is.

As far as the math videos go, I've been browsing around different videos, and the boring videos where people stand up and solve a problem on a white board is NOT what I want to do. I'm aiming at math concepts from middle school, which in my experience so far is mainly algebra and geometry, possibly lumped in with integrated math (I'm not sure exactly what "integrated" math is, but I remember taking the class). A lot of the comments on math YouTube videos are "how is this pertinent?" Using this as a base, I think I will try to use middle school math concepts and create pertinent examples as problems to solve.

500 and change

More pictures for Waffles!!!!111!!!1!! This post has a little bit of everything, heck, it is 4am, what else have I got to do?

Keeping track of post numbers is a bit frivolous, seeing how I have numerous blogs, and blogs that have been transferred between Livejournal, WordPress and Blogger. That aside, this is number 500, baby! There have been some mundane happenings this week for me, and knowing that the next post would be #500 kept me from posting. Funny that I finally get inspiration to post the big #500 at 2:36am on Friday morning... I'm fresh off a big downswing in poker and a break up, and I'm ready to make some changes.

Erin and I talked by the river and half-heartedly agreed to end things. I went into the afternoon discussion with full intentions of breaking things off, but I think the consensus we came to is that Erin leaves for Jordan at the end of September, and we'll go our separate ways then. I feel a bit weird about the whole thing. Right after the "break up", I actually felt a lot more attracted to her than the past month or so, and I'm not really sure why. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that we can have fun, but I don't feel responsible for all of the "bad" things about having a relationship (i.e. loss of freedom, having to do things, blah blah). With a few days since our talk, I've been feeling very lonely, and that isn't a feeling I was expecting. It feels amazing to be loved, and I now realize how much I love the security of being in a relationship, but this new realization makes me think I was more interested in a relationship than in a relationship with specifically Erin, and although it sucks to admit, it seems like a good thing to admit now than later.

In a possibly related note, I've become hip to Blues Traveler again, fresh off a 15 year hiatus from listening to the band:



I've downloaded four of their songs, and this band is amazing... anyways, back to the juicy stuff.

The "break up" is a catalyst for some other changes in my life. I will be moving out of my parents' basement in a couple of weeks, and there is definitely some anxiety along with the move. I'm moving in with a friend from the teaching program, who I don't know terribly well, but the living situation is hard to beat. His parents moved to Dominica, a small island SE of Cuba, and he is staying at their house near Mill Creek. The house is huge, and it is just us two sharing the 4br 3ba house, my rent being $450+util, which is equivalent to sharing a house with five others and having 1/5 of a bathroom in Seattle.

I've spent the last month pretty much being a worthless slob. I've gotten out and taken a few pictures, and I will continue to get out, but I've spent way too many hours sitting in front of my computer with gmail and facebook open, waiting for something to happen. I've made a few goals for August involving spending my time more productively (specifically on the job front). Another goal involves normalizing my sleep schedule. The heat wave Seattle has been in for the past few days has encouraged me to stay up late and sleep in until past noon, when the room warms up and makes it impossible to sleep. Last night I went to bed at 5am and woke up at 2pm today, mostly because I didn't have anything to do. I don't really like not having anything to do.

Speaking of the heat wave, two crazy things of note. First, I went down to Magnuson Park last night with my mom's cousin's foreign exchange student Peter, who was passing through on his journey of the US. Seattle hit 103 degrees, and Magnuson Park had cars parked all the way up to Sand Point Way. I've never seen so many cars parked there, there were literally five times as many cars as I think I've ever seen there before.

The second crazy heat happening occurred this afternoon right before softball. I rode my motorcycle to the UW Bookstore to possibly purchase a few middle school math books that could help my first year of teaching, or substitute teaching. I ended up finding a good book by none other than Danica Mckeller, or Winnie from The Wonder Years!



The reason I purchased this book is that her experience with math up until the 8th grade is the complete opposite of mine. I was amazing at math, and it came very easily to me. Most of my students won't have that same experience with math, and Danica's book expresses very real ideas of fear and frustration with middle school math. It is mostly focused for girls, but that works, because she gives plenty of examples on how to relate math concepts into terms that tween girls might understand, and I would never think to consider.

Flipping through the book, I came to a section on factoring, and Danica uses friendship bracelets and beading to explain factors. Say you are making a friendship bracelet and you have 16 onyx beads and 10 sapphire beads. In order to make a design or pattern for the necklace, you need to see how the beads can be divided. How many different groups can you make with the 16 onyx beads? Well, you could make 16 groups of 1 bead each, or you could make 8 groups of 2 beads each, or 4 groups of 4 beads each. How can we split up the 10 sapphire beads? Now which groups should we use to make the bracelet (this is up to you!) Guess what, you just factored!

Something feels a bit weird about a book written by a former child star, who graduated with a mathematics degree from UCLA, and is focusing on spreading the word to girls that being smart is sexy. I mean, the message is great, but also looking like this is sexy:





The fact that she relates the fear of a middle school math test to getting a bikini wax scares me a bit. If I have this book in my math class library, I'd like to place a bet on whether the girls or the guys will look through the book more (and no, she does not have scantily clad pictures of herself in the book, well... besides the cover's low V-cut).

OK, I got way off on a tangent there (not a co-tangent, mind you). What I was initially going to say is about the Seattle heat wave. When I left the book store and made it out to the parking lot where I left my motorcycle, which had been in the shade, I noticed that the Honda Ruckus parked next to me had its center stand melted into the blacktop of the parking lot. It was crazy! I thought maybe the Ruckus had been there a long time and nobody actually used it, because it was parked there when I arrived two hours earlier. Then I looked at my bike, and my side stand had punched through (melted through?) the black top. There was a hole about an inch deep in the black top, and I was scared that I wouldn't be able to get my side stand up out of the hole. I was actually pretty lucky, because I parked on a slight decline, and if the bike had tipped over a few more inches, it would have crashed down on top of the Ruckus. I was able to lift the bike's side stand back up through the hole in the black top. I never thought it would get hot enough in Seattle to have my steel side stand melt a hole through blacktop.

Brief Reprieve

It snowed three inches in Seattle last Thursday, and today I'm sunbathing on the porch with Ichi and Watson. I stayed up until 4am last night working on my literacy projects. I should probably be napping, but the sun feels amazing, especially with the weight of those literacy papers off of my scrawny shoulders.

This morning I woke up to my second alarm clock (my phone), which I rarely ever set. I have no recollection of a first alarm clock or subsequent snooze attempts, but the cell phone blare definitely woke me up. I stumbled downstairs and while walking down the stairs, I heard a slight commotion coming from the kitchen. There wasn't meowing going on, so I hesitated before opening the door. When I peaked my head into the kitchen, I saw what looked like a blue jay (or a blue bird) flapping its wings and trying to fly out of the closed windows. Watson was inside, sitting on the kitchen table staring up at the bird, and Ichi was outside on the hot tub cover pawing at the bird from the other side of the window.

I opened the back door and tried shooing the bird outside, but it, and its eye-ball piercing beak had other ideas. Eventually, I grabbed a towel and covered the bird, and carried it outside and placed it on a branch. It flew/hopped into the interior of the tree, with a damaged wing. I had wondered if our cats might go after bigger birds one of these days, and that question was answered this morning. The bird this morning was about the size of my hand, and could probably do some damage to our cats, if our cats weren't such good hunters!

I've got a resume to start on, and an observed lesson plan I need to start writing for Thursday afternoon. I also need to head inside and not get a March 3rd sun burn. Mom pointed out to me that today is square root day, 3/3/9. She said the next square root day will not happen until 4/4/16. Why doesn't 9/9/09 count? Does it have to be the whole equation, or does each number just need to be a square number? 4/4/09?

Speaking of math, Dr. Chako responded quickly with an answer to Math Question #2. He got the same answer I got quickly, until the math teacher said there are more boxes. "Try to create a square with an area of two," she said. "If you can create a square with an area of two, you will see how to create additional squares with areas of more than just 1, 4, 9, and 16."

The questions remain, from a 5x5 dot drawing, by connecting dots with a straight line:
1) How many different-sized squares can you make?
2) How many total squares can you make?

Math Problem #2

I'm sure this is not the second math problem I have put up on this blog, but I started writing "Math Prob..." and the only other title entry was Problem #1, so I guess I should start up a series.

We did a fun math problem today in class, and I thought I would share the problem, and my extension of the problem with my internet friends.

Draw a 5x5 square of dots, so five dots across in a row, and five rows down:

. . . . .
. . . . .
. . . . .
. . . . .
. . . . .

The above drawing might not be a perfect square, but ideally the space between dots would make a perfect square for each foursome of dots.

The two questions are:
1) How many different-sized squares can you make?
2) How many total squares can you make?

The two questions are a bit trickier than meets the eye. One hint is to see what area of boxes you can make. Can you make a box with an area of 1 (assuming the distance between each dot is 1)? How about 2?

I've got answers for both, although I'm not sure if my answer to the second part of this question is correct, so I'd like someone to try and see if we get the same answer.

We used Geo-boards in class and had rubber-bands to band around the pegs, if you have an old Geo-board lying around at home.

Dr. Chako Hits A Good Ball (+follow up math question!)

Fresh off my Issaquah home game break evenness, I completely forgot to mention that Dr. Chako and I played racquetball Saturday afternoon. This marks the first non poker-related interaction with a Seattle area poker blogger, and it was good times. Before I get into the racquetball, I'd like to recap the math question from last post...

Dad backed me for the Issaquah home game for $20, and we agreed that he would get 50% of my profit. Schaubs answered $30, but said there was no mention of the buy-in, and Dr. Chako gave a bit more reasoning behind his answer, and hit the nail on the head with an "it depends" answer. I've asked a dozen people over the past 48 hours how much I should owe my dad if we agreed to 50% of my profit, and I have gotten the following answers: $30, $20, $10 and $0.

The follow up question is can you make a logical answer for each of their answers? All of their answers seem justifiable to me, and there are multiple answers I received with completely different logic, but ending up at the same dollar amount.

On to racquetball...

The doc plays in a weekly tournament at his gym and I'm pretty sure he runs all those guys around the court, too, so I don't feel too bad about getting shellacked. Doc won the first three or four games, then I think he picked up on the fact that I wasn't leaving the rectangular cube of death until I got a victory. He had places to be, people to do, so he toned his game down a few notches in our last game and let me squeak out a 16-14 victory.

I picked up a lot of tips from the good doctor, which I will put to good use against Tyler and the r-ball crew in Seattle. Offensive ceiling shots, service aces, back wall caroms--they won't know what hit them!

Issaquah Home Game (+math question!)

In class on Friday, Lee came up to me and asked what I was up to Saturday night. I didn't have anything going on, and Lee told me about a poker game his buddy Rob was hosting. Lee and I haven't done anything outside of class together, but in class we've played some online poker (during the long lectures) and we've done a few play-by-email chess games. I've been trying to hang out with my classmates outside of class as much as possible, and this sounded like a great opportunity to do just that.

We played two $20 SNG's, the first one with seven runners and the next with only four. In the first, larger tournament, I got a big stack early flopping top set with pocket kings and it holding against a flush draw. Play got down to Lee and I heads up, and he ended up taking it down. Four of the seven of us were game for another tourney, and Lee and I got into a big pot on the third hand...

I had pocket nines and raised it up from the small blind 2.5BB. Rob called in the BB and Lee had limped from the button and now called my raise. Three to a flop of 7h 9h Kd. I sneakily checked, Rob bet out about half the pot, Lee called, and I popped it to the size of the pot. Both called.

Rather large pot for the 3rd hand of the tourney, and I put one of them on top pair and the other on a flush draw. Turn made the board:

7h 9h Kd Ah

Crap. I wasn't happy with the heart, so I checked. Rob checked, and Lee bet half the pot. It was a big bet, and represented a third of my remaining chip stack, but I wasn't positive he had the flush. He could still have a draw or AK. I called, and Rob folded. River made the board:

7h 9h Kd Ah Kh

I viewed this as a "Gin!" card, and really hoped Lee had the flush. For some reason AK no longer scared me, and I pushed all-in. Lee insta-called. I showed my boat and Lee showed Qh4h for the "nut" flush. He was ready to scoop the pot when Rob pointed out that my boat beat his flush.

Lee flopped out of his chair and started writhing on the ground in pain.

"Noooo!!! When I saw that King I thought my Queen-hi flush was the best hand possible! God Damnit!!"

It was a nice suck--re-suck hand, but sadly I couldn't take my 2:1 chip advantage to the cleaner, and I bubbled 30mins later to break even for the night.

MATH TIME!!!

The most interesting part of the night for me was the backing arrangement I had with my dad. I needed $20 to play, and didn't have time to hit an ATM on the way to the game. He are the stipulations for the backing. Dad gave me $20, and we agreed that he would get half of my profit.

1st: $20 buy-in, I won $40 for finishing 2nd.
2nd: $20 buy-in, I won $0 for bubbling.

How much do I owe Dad, and why?

Back to School

Here's my take on the math problem from last post:

1a) Every chair you pass takes 4 seconds. At zero seconds you are across from chair 2, at unload you are across from chair 200. 200 - 2 = 198. 198 * 4secs = 792 seconds, or 13 minutes and 12 seconds.

1b) On chair 35, directly across from chair 200, the chairs in front of you are chairs 34 through 18. Chair 18 is at the unload spot, and chair 17 is directly across. At time zero, you are directly across from chair 200 (or chair zero), at unload you will be across from chair 34. 34 - 0 = 34. 34 * 4secs = 136 seconds, or 2 minutes and 16 seconds.

Today was my first day at my main placement. It was great to be back with the students I got to meet in September, and I received a very warm welcome. We capped off the day with a staff meeting, and I forgot how much those suck. I don't think I would mind them as much if I was actually a teacher and had some say in the matters discussed, but being a student teacher and having to sit through the conferences is torture. There is a teacher who discovered she has cancer in her bone marrow last month. She is currently undergoing chemo treatment and visits the school 18 hrs per week. During the staff meeting she said, "This doesn't make chemo treatments seem that bad!"

Stevens Pass Day 6: Twilight, Math, Burn

FUN MATH QUESTION AT THE BOTTOM!!!

Oh man, I wish I had brought my camera today. I checked numerous weather forecasts last night and they all said a big storm was coming late today. With my luck, I decided not to get greedy--go early and leave early. I made it up to the mountain just before opening, and the views on the drive there were spectacular. High clouds with a slit of blue sky between the clouds and the mountains, which let the sunrise beam through and light up the mountain in what I can only describe as twilight blue. The clouds ranged from salmon to yellow, it was a very good wake up distraction.

I took Big Chief to Southern Cross, the quickest way to the backside at Stevens, and was greeted with another amazing view. I was now above the clouds, and could see mountain tops all around, with the clouds covering the valleys. The chair lift descended into the abyss on the backside, and I followed it to the bottom, with a smile and burning legs. I rode ten chairs on the backside, all involving double-diamond terrain, and I got worked out. At one point, the lift operator said, "Nice face shots!"

I looked at him quizzically, then he pointed to his face and said, "Your beard--it is covered in snow!"

Cool! I had only fallen once, and that is when one of my skis came off from a rather jarring hit with a mogul--but I stopped on my remaining ski without face-planting. The snow on my beard must have been from a face shot I was unawares of, sneaky face-shots.

As I rode the chair lifts up I came up with a math problem for my future students, involving the number of chairs on the lift, the time it takes to reach the top, and the individual number of each chair. I haven't hammered out all the details yet, but I'm thinking of asking something along the lines of:

1a) Chairs on a chair lift are numbered 1 to 200 consecutively. At the beginning of the lift you are on chair 1. In front of you is chair 200 and directly across from you is chair 2. Just as you get on chair 1, chair 102 unloads at the top of the lift and is directly across from chair 101. After riding the chair for 8 seconds, you are still on chair 1, but now directly across from you is chair 4. How long does it take you to unload at the top of the lift?

1b) Now you are on chair 35, and directly across from you is chair 200. How much longer until you unload?

Guesses? Show your work!

Extra credit question: is this skiing type of question one that would favor well-to-do kids over low-income kids? Is it still worth using in class if it favors one subset of kids over another?

Two can play this game...

Guinness. Mmm Mmm Guinness.

Jessica's been whooping me at scrabble ever since she realized triple letter and word scores exist. I think our next game might have to be a little poker.

Tonight's math class was pretty funny. I've made a friend in the class who also has a dry sense of humor, and we sit in the third row and keep a running commentary going during class. He's auditing the class, so he doesn't care too much about his grade, but the wise-cracking actually helps me study, because it keeps me awake and attentive in class.

I've already mentioned how the professor is a Russian ex-Bond girl. She's got the body of a sexy, strong Bond girl-villain as well. There is a kid named Nicoli in the class, who is American, born and raised, but for some reason she always calls on him to answer the questions. I'm not sure why, maybe because he answers her. We poke fun at Nicoli for this, and he laughs along with us, because he has no idea why she always calls on him either. He's a happy-go-lucky kid, but for some reason my friend pushed the envelope and started whispering about Nicoli earning his A the easy way. We agreed that she would snap him in half. I couldn't stop laughing, because the more I thought of the prof and Nicoli in bed, the worse it got. The last image I shook out of my head was Nicoli scratching and clawing at the floor, trying to keep himself away from the bed, with no luck. The prof drags him back by the legs for more punishment.

But we learned about interest and COMPOUND INTEREST today in class, my Dad's favorite interest. He's talked to me 200x about compound interest, and I'm a freaking Business major, so I should know what interest is. We spent pretty much the entire period on interest, and big surprise: there isn't a single question about interest on the next take home "assignment." I hate hate hate the way this lady teaches.

Math Tilt

Over the past six months, I've been retaking the math classes I took in high school to get the college credit I need in order to specialize in middle school math for my teaching program. I was envisioning a nice refresher of algebra and trigonometry to get me in the right frame of mind once the teaching program starts up.

But this quarter is hell.

The math professor I have has a very thick Russian accent, and she and I are never on the same wave-length. I don't know how much of it is her having English as a second language, or how much it is our completely different psyches. Whenever I ask a question, she ends up answering something completely different than what I asked, and no matter how I try and describe it differently, she never understands what I'm getting at until somebody else says THE EXACT SAME THING I just said, and for some reason she understands them and answers the question.

I found out last Monday that she used to work in Russia with nuclear submarines. She knows her shit, but she also is a terrible teacher. She berates students that come in late and students who ask "stupid" questions. It is fairly obvious that she means well, but her temper is so short, and the fact that I haven't heard her issue a single word of encouragement rubs me the wrong way. Students are afraid to ask questions, and I wouldn't be surprised if half the class is failing. She comes to class the next day and berates the class for having such poor test scores. I want to bring a mirror to class tomorrow night.

We have homework assigned, which we are supposed to keep up with--but the homework isn't graded. We have "assignments," and we get a new "assignment" every Wednesday, which is due the following Wednesday. These are five to ten different *difficult* math questions, that are supposed to challenge us and take us hours to complete. The weekly dynamic of the class has boiled down to everyone meeting in the math learning center an hour before class on Wednesday to copy off the smart kids. I try to get the assignments done, but we don't go over half of the material on the damn things, and the problems are 10x more complex than anything in the text book.

On top of the weekly graded assignments, we have a test coming up tomorrow. The assignment we have is on the next chapter after the test, so it doesn't make any sense to work on that now, nor does working on the homework for the next chapter--but if I don't start working on them now, instead of studying the material for the test--I'll have five hours of "assignment" to do Tuesday night.

I'm tilting because I picked it up today and tried to tackle a few of the problems. I recognized a few questions that I had an idea of how to complete, but I ended up spending an hour and a half on one of the problems, which had to do with the Law of Sines and Cosines, and bearings.

There is a fire N35E of Ranger Station A, and N49W of Ranger Station B. If Ranger Station A is 1.3 miles due West of Ranger Station B, how far is each Ranger Station from the fire?

Then the follow up question adds in a helicopter, capable of dumping water on the fire. The helicopter is located at Ranger Station C, which is 1.5 miles S42E of Ranger Station A. The follow up questions ask how far Ranger Station C is from the fire, and at what bearing is the fire from Ranger Station C.

I find these types of questions pretty fun, because there are many ways to solve them. So I work through this problem for about 30 minutes and get all the way to the final part of the second question, and I get stuck trying to figure out how to find the bearing from C to the fire. An hour later, I finally figure it out.

As I'm checking over my answers to make sure I haven't made any stupid mistakes, I find in the book that N35E is 35 degrees East from North, not 35 degrees North from East. I worked the entire problem with the latter. Now I have to go back and redo the entire problem with the correct angles.

Ugh. Back to the grindstone.

It's the Wherewithals! The Wherewithals!

Stacey's band played a show in Ballard last night, and they played good. Not to say they weren't good when I last saw them about a year ago, but Tessa put it best by saying the band sounds polished now. Hop over to Tessa's blog if you want to see pictures. My calves hurt by the end of their set, getting my standing-still groove on, and the more my calves hurt--the better the show!

Just waxed my in-class math test, but have to work on my take-home test now. It isn't due until Monday, but I'll be playing in the Hanford Hoowwwwl all weekend long. The tournament raised $4000 for the Special Olympics last year, hopefully we can best that this year. I've already arranged for Friday night to have two poker tournaments, and if you know ultimate tournaments, you know there will be copious amounts of drinking and fun had by all. Can't wait!

Bent Over

Ouch, that math test hurt. My bum. I broke the cardinal rule when it comes to test-taking. I had three problems left when I checked the clock for the first time all period. It showed 12:55pm. Holy shit. Class was supposed to get out five minutes ago, and I still have 3 problems out of 10 I haven't even touched. I actually made it through two of them, but the prof. forcibly collected all of the tests so I white-flagged while on question number ten.

Driving home, I caught site of Mt. Rainier with plenty of fresh snow. Amazing.

Monday Math Day

I got home from tennis practice today at around 5pm and plopped down in the empty living room with my laptop, my math take-home test, and ESPN-HD. I was fighting between playing WoW for an hour or so, or finishing up my math take-home test which is due tomorrow. I decided on Plan: C and flipped on the tube.

I always forget about Monday Night Football. Saturdays are for college football. Sundays are for the NFL. Mondays are... for checking out blogs at work? I just don't associate Monday with football.

But since the Cowboys and the Bills were just getting underway, I decided to grab my math take-home test and work on that while watching the game. The Bills hadn't played on Monday Night Football in 13 years, and that stadium was rocking. They dominated pretty much the entire game, but couldn't keep the Cowboys down--even after five interceptions and a fumble from Romo. Six turnovers from the QB and you still win???

In the last 20 seconds of the game you have a touchdown, followed by a botched 2-pt attempt to tie the game lob-fade to T.O. in the end-zone. Followed by a successful onside kick by Dallas. 18 seconds left. Then a 20-yd pass to Owens and a spike with two seconds left... but wait, the booth decides to review the catch AFTER the spike play. The catch gets called incomplete, but the officials put back 13 seconds back on the clock. Get a complete pass towards the sideline for 4yds. 7 seconds left. Get another pass complete to the sidelines for 8yds. 2 seconds left. 53-yd field goal attempt... IS GOOD!!! wait... Buffalo apparently called a timeout before the snap. Reset. 53-yd attempt#2 is up... and it is GOOD! Dallas wins 25-24. What?!

The game definitely distracted me at times from my math work, but I spent nearly all of the game working on the test. I finished it just before the craziness with 20 seconds left--which is about 4 hours of math. A bit more than I thought I'd have, but I think I got every question correct and I'm looking forward to acing the in-class exam tomorrow. A few of the questions I was having issues with yesterday seemed to all come together tonight, and I'll leave you one in case you want to try your hand (it sucks):

Solve for x, y and z

100x+200y+500z=47
350x+5y+250z=33.9
200x+80y+100z=23.4

And a much more fun problem:

Bob and Mary own a birdhouse-making company. They have two models, a single-home birdhouse and the deluxe multiplex birdhouse. The deluxe model sells for $20, while the single-home birdhouse sells for $12. Every single-home house takes Bob three hours to build and Mary one hour to paint and decorate. Every multiplex birdhouse takes Bob four hours to build and Mary two hours to paint and decorate. Bob can't work more than 48 hours per week, and Mary can't work more than 20 hours per week.

How many single-home birdhouses and multiplex birdhouses should Bob and Mary build if they want to maximize their profits?

Show your work!

Math Problem #1

Well, seeing how there is a lot more math in my life recently, I think I'll start up a weekly or bi-weekly math problem slash brain-teaser for you to test your meddle.

Tonight's problem is actually from my friend Andrew's dad. He's been teaching a math club at the elementary school Andrew and I went to 15 years ago. He's continued to teach this math club that goes to Math Olympiad every year to compete, even though his youngest son is now 25. He and I went to the Mariners game tonight and we got to talking math. I asked him if there were any problems that have stood out over his years, and the first one that popped into his head was this one:

A+B+C=20
A+B+D=25
A+C+D=30
B+C+D=28

A+B+C+D=???

Oh, and of course: show your work! :)

I was trying to do this in my head while watching the baseball game, it took me a good 5 innings to figure it out, with many hints along the way. But feel free to use notepad or some paper and a pencil. If you need a hint, check out the comment section. Good luck!

And go Mariners! Walk-off sacrifice fly by Guillen to win in the bottom of the 9th!