Anyone good at maths?

[Splodgerbodgerbadger]

My DD has been given this homework and we are stumped! It’s using four fours (4,4,4,4) and any operations to make up the numbers 0-30. We have done some but are really stuck on others.

Can they use factorial?

It does say 'any operations' so using factorial should be fair game.
And yes I can see that square root would be too.

I suppose it depends on the age group it's aimed at.

Yes we are only going to submit the ones DD managed to work out. To be honest it’s me who’s struggled! This is year six dread to think what senior school will be like!

If we are allowing square root, then how about indices?

You can make 1 by doing 4 ^0 and then you've got another 4 to play with.

You don't need the little 2 in a square root though, whereas indices would be using extra digits, so surely that wouldn't be in the rules.

I'd be uncomfortable with squares and square roots because there's a number 2 implied, but just not written (unless the 2 is itself composed of fours combined using the basic operators). I'm not even certain that using "44" in a calculation would be considered acceptable, because if you think about it, that's really just shorthand for (10 x 4) + 4.

I suspect niggles like the above could well be raised when the homework is gone through in class. In maths, the reasoning that got you to the answer is at least as important as the answer itself - so you need to be mindful of any assumptions made along the way, and to state them if necessary. Do that, and you're on the way to becoming a good mathematician!

I do like a nice maths thread.

You can't, because you haven't got a 0. Unless you use 4 - 4.

This is year six dread to think what senior school will be like

If it's year 6, then I am pretty sure factorials aren't covered in that.

But as to whether you can use factorials?

6 is

4+4 = 8
8/4 = 2
8-2 = 6

That doesn’t work as you have used the 8 twice, it needs to be able to be written as a single calculation e.g. 4+(4+4)/4