Rae'ven Hill-Mathematics in a Story

The King's Chessboard and Exponential Growth

Book: The King's Chessboard 
Author: David Birch

1. For this blog, I picked the children's picture book, The King's Chessboard. This picture book tells the tale of a king who wants to reward a wise man for providing a service for him. After being summoned, the wise man says serving the king is his reward. The king does not accept this as a reward so he tells the wise man he must choose a real reward or he'll regret it. The wise man silently thinks until the chessboard catches his eye. The wise man then devises a plan that consisted of the king giving the wise man one grain of rice for the first square of his chessboard then for 64 days give him twice the number of grains of the square before it. The proud king wondered how much rice he would have to give up in the end but the king didn't want anyone to think he was unsure of himself so he accepted this request. Eventually after the king saw sixteen wagons going to the wise man, he summoned the royal mathematicians to see if they made a mistake. The mathematicians revealed the amount that the king promised the wise man in total was 549,755,830,887 tons! Overcome with grief and anger, the king summoned the wise man after the thirty second day. The king admits that there's not enough rice in the kingdom to satisfy the wise man and asks would satisfy him. The wise man agrees there's not enough rice in the world and he admits he has been satisfied all along but it was the king who insisted on rewarding him so in order to satisfy the king he made this request. The wise man then asked the king is he satisfied. The king admits he is satisfied and that the wise man has again provided him with another service. The wise man then concludes by saying he is the one that's truly rewarded by providing the king this service.

2. In The Kings's Chessboard, the wise man demonstrates a crafty way to show exponential growth through rice. The first day, the wise man had 1 grain of rice but by the eighth day, the servant brought him 128 grains of rice. The rapid growth rate of the rice represents exponential growth as the number of grains increases from 1 to 128 in eight days. By the twelfth day, the king's weigher started weighing by ounces instead of counting in grains because counting the individual grains took him all day. The expression represented within the book is 2^x when is x greater than or equal to 0. This book does a great job of explaining exponential growth with an interesting story.

3. There are many advantages in using literature to teach mathematical concepts. The first and most important reason is that it could get kids who were not interested in math to become intrigued enough to actually learn about the mathematical concept. Also, I believe another advantage in using literature is the advantage of showing math used in real life. If young kids see that math is used in their daily lives they might view math as entertaining and useful. I remember as a child loving applying math to real life. Personally, I learned how to count change by physically counting coins instead of just listening to the teacher lecture. So in conclusion, literature that applies math can be extremely helpful because it incorporates a real life situation and it can spark a child's interest especially if the story is entertaining and creative.