Young learners (beginning primary school) need to practice their numeracy skills, and one technique that is used is to give the learner a few terms of a simple numerical series, and he or she must guess the next three.
For example, the series:
1 4 7 10 ___ ___ ___
Requires the answers 13, 16, and 19. The numbers increase by three each time.
Write a computer program that will create a series, then allow the user to put in the three missing terms. The scoring can be done as follows: One point for each correct term the user gives.
You can use the random number generator to:
- Pick the first term of the series.
- Pick the gap between numbers.
You can make the series more difficult by
- Allowing a larger first number,
- Allowing a larger gap,
- Providing fewer terms.
Extensions
Some ideas to incorporate:
- Allow the program to increase in difficulty for each series that the user gets right.
- Keep an “honours roll” of high scorers.
- Allow users to select difficulty levels.
- Complicate the series by using different math techniques: squares, cubes, alternating positive and neg numbers, decreasing series, etc.
Credit Blundell@MonktonCoombe
Category: Challenges