Stephen F. Austin State University

At McMichael Middle School, sometimes 10 + 4 equals 2. Not everyday, just during the Math Blitz presented recently by professors and students from the SFA math department for McMichael students.

Clock math, as it is known among laymen, or modular arithmetic, the mathematics circles, is, in basic terms, math based on a circle, such as a clock, instead of a line, with which most people are familiar.

Students quickly caught on to the game, so Dr. Keith Hubbard, assistant professor in the SFA math department, moved on to a bar code number "magic trick." Using items in the classroom, Hubbard asked students to read off all but one number in a bar code, and within seconds he could tell them the missing number. He continued by explaining how he figured out the number.

By adding the numbers in the odd spaces, such as the first, third and fifth numbers, then taking only the ones column from that answer and multiplying that by three, the students were halfway there. Then the numbers in the even spaces, such as the second, fourth and sixth numbers, were then added together and again, taking only the number from the ones column and adding it with the first number, they were almost finished. All that was left was to figure out what number, after adding the first two together, was needed to make 10 (or zero, in keeping with only using the ones column) the students had then found the missing number from the bar code.

Although it sounds confusing, the students seemed to understand the process.

"Finding the product code, we do that in math," Karen Fancher, a seventh grade math teacher said, referring to the algebra equivalent of finding "x."

But for many of her students, this was more fun.

"The ones who are not interested (usually) seem to be interested in what these people have to say," Fancher said. "They seem to really enjoy it."

She said the experience is interesting for her, too, because she gets to "see the eagerness in their eyes," which she does not always see working with the students everyday using more traditional teaching methods.

Her class learned that if you started working for a penny a day then doubled that every day, after 30 days, you would be making $5,368,709.12.

"The point of today is to come in and encourage you in the use of math," Hubbard told Connie Ferguson's eighth grade algebra class, where Texas Instrument calculators hang on the wall and Garfield posters with encouraging expressions surround the room.

"It makes math more interesting, and it is used a lot more than I thought," eighth grader Trenton Birdwell said. "Math can be fun ... sometimes."

The professors and students from SFA presented to 20 classes throughout Thursday.

"We want to encourage students about the importance of mathematics and how interesting it can be," Hubbard said.

One professor used a roulette wheel to explain probability theory. Another used graphs to show how many girls one boy can dance with in a certain period of time. Yet another explained a coding theory used to send information by cell phones.

"I think they (students) take away that math comes up in life in a lot of places they didn't expect," Hubbard said. "And that math can be a lot more interesting than sometimes it appears."

"The students seemed to really enjoy seeing math affecting everyday life," Hubbard said. "I think everybody likes a challenge if they can succeed in figuring it out, and in a way our goal is to present math as a fun puzzle.

"That is why I got into math," the University of Notre Dame graduate said. "I used to say if I could have majored in puzzle solving, I would have done that. But math has interesting puzzles, and I like solving them."