Red Lobster Algebra!

Algebra on the Kid's Menu at Red Lobster!

In the words of one of my former students, this is "FANTASTIC!" The picture to the right is from the Kid's Menu at Red Lobster.

This is algebra. There's even the word "sum"! This is evaluating expressions in algebra! Urchin is like x, Anemone is like y and Coral is like z. See? If kids can do this, so can you! I'm working on a glossary of math terms for this blog. For example, the boldface words will be linked to their definitions. As I tell my students, if you don't understand the terminology, it's like sitting in a French class when you don't speak French. Math is a language.

Thank you, Red Lobster, for making my day!

The Impetus of this Blog

The following was taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbie:

In July 1992, Mattel released Teen Talk Barbie, which spoke a number of phrases including "Will we ever have enough clothes?", "I love shopping!", and "Wanna have a pizza party?" Each doll was programmed to say four out of 270 possible phrases, so that no two dolls were likely to be the same. One of these 270 phrases was "Math class is tough!". Although only about 1.5% of all the dolls sold said the phrase, it led to criticism from the American Association of University Women. In October 1992 Mattel announced that Teen Talk Barbie would no longer say the phrase, and offered a swap to anyone who owned a doll that did.

So there you have it. I loved Barbie dolls when I was a kid, but good thing she didn't say anything like that in the '70s! This blog is for you, whether you are a student, parent, aunt, uncle, brother, sister or grandparent (did I get them all?). Stay tuned for helpful math hints and links. If you have any comments or questions, please post! If you have a question, I'm sure someone else does, too!