Website #4: Interactive Mathematics Miscellany and Puzzle

After reading the chapter on mathematics, and knowing that problem solving is one of our school improvement goals, I decided to look at a websites from this chapter. This website is "dizzying". There are, I'm not sure, but a million links! I decided to look at a link within the million categories and look at one link for each category.
Here are the main categories found:
*sites for teachers and parents *Algebra
*Arithmetic *Geometry
*Math games and puzzles *Logic
*Fractals and chaos *Visual Illusions
*Probability *Eye Opener Series
*Social Science *and Much much more
First, as I looked at a link from each category, I kept saying to myself, this is good "stuff", and will be so engaging as a class (especially on a smartboard), or individually. As a class, I have had students look at illusions. Believe me, looking at an illusion on a smartboard is magnificent. Secondly, I could see myself turning the students loose on the website and they individually look at the illusions, or I specify a certain for them to "experience".
As a math teacher, this is like the "candy in the candy store" situation. What fun it would be to be a high school math teacher and get to use this website. (I plan to share this site with my colleagues).
Here is a brief synopsis of a few links:
Visual Illusion: Heaver a Visual Illusion gives the history of the illusion, what professor created it, and the how these certain shapes are optical illusions. It is very hands on. I can hear students say "cool" to this one.
Math Games and Puzzles: Toads and Frogs Puzzle. What a great problem solving activity. I have had students show this one to me before. Move the frogs to the right and the toads to the left with hop skip or jump. What a great one for high school students!
Algebra: It has tutorial/lecture information on areas in algebra. I immediately thought how effective this would be with a substitute and teaching the information to the students. It also has a component for students to do online practice, anything from word problems to geometry. I tried this word problem:

"Another time," Said Scheherazade, "ten thieves stole into Abdul's shop. Some of them were armed and some were unarmed. The armed ones were those of senior rank. Anyway, they stole a bag of fifty six pearls. When it came to dividing them up, each senior robber took six pearls, and each junior robber got five. How many of the robbers were senior?

What was your answer? i am still trying to figure it out.......:)

All in all this is a great website. This would be a site that if I was a math teacher, I'd have it on my wiki space. As a Psychology, this would be a great site for students to do some "extra credit problem solving".

The only downfall I have noticed, is that it takes some of the links a little bit of time to upload. Students may become impatient if it doesn't load in 1.6 seconds :)