Broken calculator

Ok mathematicians, it's time to warm up our mathematical brains.

Now this is one of my favourite challenges from Dan Finkel.

It's called the broken calculator and what our challenges is, is to see if we can get to 33, make the target number of 33, but we have a few obstacles on our way so, here is sometimes how I play.

What I know is that 3 elevens is 33 so I could go, hey I have one already, but there's a problem on my calculator and that is the 3 buttons broken.

Yes, so I can't use it so that one doesn't work, but hold on the 2 and 1 is there.

So I could say 22 + 11 is 33, which is a number fact.

But the problem is, the plus button doesn't work.

Oh this pesky broken calculator.

So ok, what about subtraction? Is there look, there's a subtraction button, so 44 - 11 oh. No 4. Ok, I'm going to have to think a bit harder now.

Can you think hard with me? What are you seeing?

And so our options are we have to use division or multiplication or subtraction and/or all of them.

And we can't use 3 and we can't use 4. Ah yeah, I I can see that idea too. I think this one will work. Look 66 / 2. Is 33.

Yeah, I can use the 6 button I can use, we can use the division button and we can use the 2. Yes, that's one that gets us to 33. Nice working together mathematicians.

Ok so your challenge is, what are some other ways that you can find to get to 33 on the broken calculator? Over to you to warm up your brains.

And let's briefly talk about what's some of the mathematics in this task. So this task gets you to get you into thinking and working like a mathematician pretty quickly. It's great for practicing your skills and applying your knowledge of numbers and operations. You can also write your own challenges. You can adjust the problem, set challenges for your classmates, and challenge your teachers to.

Have fun with the broken calculator.