Daily Math Puzzles

Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics; I can assure you that mine are still greater.—Albert Einstein Everyone has heard students’ most common complaint in math class: “Why do I need to learn this? I’ll never use it when I’m older!” Some of us have even been that complainer. Many people’s difficulties with learning math in school follow them into adulthood, by which time they often assume that it’s too late to do anything about it. But even though it’s true that the average person has no need in daily life to remember what the number for Pi is and what it represents, that doesn’t mean that math serves no purpose for anybody with access to a calculator. In Your Daily Math, veteran math educator Laura Laing lays out a year’s worth of exercises meant to get you thinking about math in a different way. Laing’s approach breaks down her 366 exercises into seven categories, one for each day of the week: Number Sense, Algebra, Geometry, Application, Probability & Statistics, Logic, and Grab Bag. Laing’s approach treats these math and various number-related logic problems as fun brain exercises. Yes, there are equations here, but nothing that the average adult—even those who always hated math class—can’t handle. There are also graphs, geometry, statistics, and logic problems, many of them centered around problems that could occur in real life. Think of Your Daily Math not as homework but instead as your daily cognitive workout.