Название: Math Hacks for Scratch: Unlock the Power of Math with Scratch Programming
Автор: Michael Mays
Издательство: No Starch Press
Год: 2025
Страниц: 352
Язык: английский
Формат: epub
Размер: 62.0 MB

Push Scratch programming to the limits as you explore primes, Fibonacci numbers, Pascal’s triangle, and other mathematical curiosities through hands-on coding projects.

If you’re a student looking for project ideas to practice your math and coding skills, or a Scratch enthusiast just looking for something different, this is the book for you!

Discover the exciting intersection of mathematics and programming with Math Hacks for Scratch®. This book is perfect for kids, educators, and programming enthusiasts eager to learn or teach math through fun, hands-on projects using Scratch, the popular visual programming language.

You’ll see how a little bit of planning, combined with the right mathematical or coding tricks, can make complex calculations doable. These are the “hacks” mentioned in the title. You’ll write programs to speed up factoring big numbers, sort out a pizza party with Pascal’s triangle, explore Fibonacci’s famous sequence for counting rabbits, use cryptography to create unbreakable secret codes, and so much more.

This book uses Scratch to invite exploration with math. It presents concepts such as number representations, divisibility, prime numbers, and cryptography that are useful and relevant in daily life and that are fun to code. It’s about how to ask interesting mathematical questions and how to program a computer to answer them.

The book is also about finding the best way to solve a problem. You’ll see how a little bit of planning, combined with the right mathematical or coding tricks, can make complex calculations doable. These are the “hacks” in the book’s title; you’ll learn programming strategies for coaxing Scratch into giving you the answer you want and mathematical tricks that offer neat solutions to seemingly impossible problems.

Why Scratch? Exploring a computer language involves seeing what it can do and figuring out how it can answer the questions you want to ask. Scratch is a language that encourages play. While it’s often used to create graphics, sound, and games, its spirit of play works for exploring math, too. Scratch is simple to use: it runs directly in a web browser through the Scratch website, with no installation required (although you can download the Scratch app from site if you’d prefer to work offline). You create programs by putting commands together like LEGO bricks, with all the options immediately available via drag-and-drop. The block-based interface lets you focus on combining loops, conditionals, and variables to build whatever you want, without getting bogged down in the syntax details of a text-based language. If you’ve used Scratch to make games or write stories, it’s easy to start using it to answer math-related questions.

Inside, you’ll find:

Step-by-Step Projects: Learn how to create interactive games, animations, and simulations that bring math concepts to life. Convert between binary and decimal to see how computers keep track of numbers. Make sense of patterns in lists, sequences, and arrays. Encode cryptograms, unscramble secret messages, and crack the Caesar cipher.
Real-World Applications: See how math is used every day to calculate probabilities in games and create dynamic graphics.
Expert Guidance: Benefit from the insights of author Michael Mays, a seasoned math educator with a PhD in mathematics and a 40-year teaching career.
Accessible Learning: Ideal for both beginners and experienced programmers, this book offers clear explanations and practical examples that make learning fun and easy.

Whether you’re a beginning coder wanting to enhance your Scratch skills, a teacher looking to inspire students, or a parent supporting your child’s education, Math Hacks for Scratch provides the tools to turn coding projects into math adventures.

You’ll get the most out of this book if you have some basic Scratch programming experience already. For example, you should be comfortable creating your own variables, lists, and custom blocks. It will also help to have some knowledge of algebra and geometry, such as understanding how to work with algebraic variables and interpret points on a coordinate plane. You’ll be amazed by what you can do in Scratch with just these few ingredients, from finding all the prime numbers in a set to creating unbreakable secret codes.

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