From: Earlene <emhines@hotmail.com>
To: Teacher2Teacher Public Discussion
Date: 2002092418:04:17
Subject: Halloween math bulletin board

	
One of my favorite bulletin boards was inspired by an article in a
World Book-Childcraft book, copyright 1982, book 13 "Mathemagic", that
I picked up at a garage sale.  I used the idea for a Math Club Society
bulletin board in college.  

It is a proof that vampires cannot exist, because if one vampire bites
2 people who become vampires and they each bite 2 people who
each...soon there will be more vampires than there are people in the
entire earth.  So that if I am not a vampire and you are not a
vampire, then no one is a vampire.  Of course the assumptions must be
true for this to be a valid proof, but the professors checked out the
proof and it held up.  So you can take a 4th grade level explanation
and jazz it up to college level.  It made a good bulletin board for
October.  I think it had something to do with the Binomial Theorem or
whatever...how quickly we forget!  I think high school students would
appreciate it, and you could use charts and graphs instead of a formal
logical proof.

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