Education: Math & Ticktacktoe

The more he observed the goings-on in the Illinois high-school math class, the more uncomfortable the young mathematician became. At one point the teacher took up a "story" problem which involved two equations with two unknowns (10x+50y =320 and x+2=y). One boy ingeniously found a way to solve the problem with only one unknown, x+5 (x+2) = 32. But the teacher did not congratulate him: she told him he was "wrong" and sent him back to his seat. To Mathematician David Page, 31, of the University of Illinois' College of Education, this was just one more example of why high-school...

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