Bublz!: Playing with Bubbles to Develop Mathematical Thinking - 17 views
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Garrett Eastman on 15 Mar 15Abstract: "We encounter mathematical problems in various forms in our lives, thus making mathematical thinking an important human ability [6]. Of these problems, optimization problems are an important subset: Wall Street traders often have to take instantaneous, strategic decisions to buy and sell shares, with the goal of maximizing their profits at the end of a day's trade. Continuous research on game-based learning and its value [2] [3] led us to ask: can we develop and improve the ability of mathematical thinking in children by guising an optimization problem as a game? In this paper, we present Bublz!, a simple, click-driven game we developed as a first step towards answering our question."