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Article: Magic squares from primary classroom to postgraduate research in 10 simple exercises: Tim Roberts invites students and their teachers to engage with the mathematics of magic squares.
- Article from:
- Australian Primary Mathematics Classroom
- Article date:
- December 22, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 The Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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It is not often that one can introduce primary school students to a problem at the forefront of mathematics research, and have any expectation of understanding; but with magic squares, one can do exactly that. Magic squares are an ideal tool for the effective illustration of many mathematical concepts. This paper assumes little prior knowledge on the part of the student except for addition and multiplication, reflection and rotation; but, using questions and exercises throughout, finishes by posing a problem tough enough to test postgraduate mathematics students, to which no-one has yet managed to find a solution.
Who knows what a magic square is?
Some ...