Get the latest tech news
Attention Spans for Math and Stories (2019)
Editor’s note: This essay was originally published in 2019. I have made minor edits in this republishing. There was a MathOverflow thread about mathematically interesting games for 5–6 year olds. A lot of the discussion revolved around how young age 5 really is, and how we should temper expectations because we don’t really remember what it’s like to be 5. In response to an enormous answer by Alexander Chervov, user LSpice quipped, “‘Daddy, daddy, let’s play another in the infinite indexed family of perfect-information draw-free cheap-to-construct two-player games!
On such hot days, I would end the activities early and have the kids gather around in the shade to regale them with a tale about a “mission” another counselor and I had embarked on in our long, storied career. One strategy I employed to make them feel more welcome—emulating a scout who did this when I was younger—was to invent outlandish, Chuck Norrissian tales about their feats of bravery and strength on these outings. For example, on a snow camping trip one scout didn’t bring proper clothes, so his feet were soaked and he was cold and miserable.
Or read this on Hacker News
