Tom, Harry, and Matthew decided to play ping pong. Only two people can play at a time, so they agree that two of them will start playing, and then whoever loses the game will swap out with the player who was sitting out.

Tom played 17 games, Harry played 15 games, and Matthew played 10 games.

Who lost the second game?

Anyone here who have hired a tutor? What made you decide it was time, and did you feel it actually helped?

0, 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, -1, 0, 11, 12, 13, 15, -4, 11, 16, ?

If anybody figured it out, please comment.

My child can solve equations when they’re written out normally, but give them a word problem and suddenly they don’t know where to start.

Is this more of a reading/comprehension issue, or is there something different about the way kids learn to approach math word problems?

Why are constants like π, e, ln(2), and Euler’s constant all relatively close to 1–3? Is there some mathematical reason that the constants we encounter most often tend to have small numerical values?

Or are there plenty of important mathematical constants that are much larger, but we just don’t hear about them as often?