The Adventures of ALS Boy

A middle-school math teacher documents his joyful life while battling the evil forces of ALS.

by Jason Picetti

Mental Math Minute

Do you want to play a game?

Published on December 29, 2010 by Jason Picetti in The Adventures of ALS Boy

Being a true blue numbers geek, I am constantly on the lookout for ways to keep the tip of my mechanical pencil on the proverbial scratch paper of life now that my career as a molder of young mathematical minds has been cut short by motor neuron disease.

I discovered such a diversion today.

You know how on weekday morning news programs they have that little graphic in the bottom right corner of the screen that shows the current, up-to-the-second value of the New York Stock Exchange and just above that five digit, two decimal point number is a positive or negative two digit two decimal point number which denotes the gains or losses of the market in real time as well as that aforementioned overall number?

Well, this morning I invented a little mental math game -- no calculators or all-knowing computer programs allowed -- where given the current total and daily value of the NYSE, you have to figure out the initial value of the exchange prior to the start of trading for the day.

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For example, let's say that the overall value is up 2.3 points to 17.4. The question that needs to be answered is what was the value before it gained those 2.3 points? Simple math will lead you to an answer of 15.1 as the initial number.

Pretty easy, right?

Well, considering that both sets of numbers get updated about once every three to four seconds on the screen and the digits themselves are a bit more complex than those given in the example, now you've got yourself a more challenging puzzle on your hands.

Before you cry uncle and curse my name for even bringing it up, why don't you just give it a shot the next time you are watching the morning news and you notice that little NYSE bug in the corner. You just may find that it's not as difficult a mental math problem as it sounds here.