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There is a scene in the movie that has a jailertelling his officers,

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“Half of you go this side. Half of you go that side. Rest ofyou, follow me!”

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Zzero: Tell me Eka, how many people followed the jailer?
Eka: Zzero, you must be joking!

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Zzero: No one followed the jailer. One half plusanother half of the same thing makes a full!

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Sankhya and Ganith had to share a huge aloo Paratha for lunch. Theyboth liked aloo Paratha very much. “Let’s cut it into two. Each of uscan have one part,” said Ganith. “You cut it, Sankhya.”

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Sankhya was going to fold the parathainto two, when her friends Faisal andJohn walked in. “We want a piece too!”they said.

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Sankhya and Ganith would have had 1 2 a paratha each. Now they would have tohave 1 4 of a paratha.

So they had to divide one paratha into four equal pieces. After Sankhya had cut theparatha neatly into four pieces, John saw a sugarcane piece in the kitchen. “I’ll eatthe sugarcane. I don’t want the paratha,” he decided.

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Sankhya, Ganith and Faisal had a quarter of theparatha each. And they cut up John’s quarter intothree. What do you think they did with that!

Fractions are nothing but parts of a whole.

Try this:

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Take a sheet of notepaper, fold it in hald, and colour the top flap. You have colured half of the sheet.

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It means you have coloured 1 part of two ewual parts that make up a whole. ( 1 2 ) Now fold over in half again and colour the top in a different colour. You have colored 1 part of 4.

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Fold the sheet over another time. Colour the top using anothercolour pencil. Open the sheet out fully and see whatfraction you have coloured.

Shapely numbers

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Sankhya watched as Amma made a beautiful rangoli. First she made many dots. Then she joined the dots to make designs.

“Amma. How do you know how many dots to make?”

Amma mumbled something, because she really did not have an answer.

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But Zzero has discovered a way to make shapes out of numbers.

Take any number and its next number. (Two numbers that have a differenceof 1 are called consecutive numbers.)

Multiply them and divide the answer by 2.

You can make a triangular number grid with this new answer.

6 7 divided by 2 = 21.

You can form a triangle with 21 dots, starting with 6 dots at the bottom, reducing one dot as you go higher, till you have just onedot on top.

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Or you can start with one dot on top, and keep increasing one dot in the next line as you go down.

Can you tell how many dots you need to make an 8 - decker triangle with dots?

36.
8 9 2 36 .

Try this:

Make grids using dots. Then draw funny figures.

Funny figures in a grid of dots.

Let's fly

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Zzero: Eka, let’s fly!
Eka: Zzero, we are not birds. And we are not pilots. Sohow can we fly?

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Zzero: Let’s make paper planes and fly them. Listen friends, let’splay detectives!

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Write a coded message using numbers on a piece of paper. Make this into a paper plane.Send it zooming in the class.

The person on whom the plane lands has to decode the message.The numbers must represent alphabets.

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The numbers that make up one word can be put together with hyphens.

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Some students scratched theirheads.
Some scratched busily on papers with their pencils. Soon there were differentkinds of planes flying in class.

Can you decode some of these messages that ‘landed’?

13-29 / 15-29-25-9! (Notice that all the numbers are ODD)

GO HOME! (Starting with 1 for A, 3 for B…….51 for Z)

49-29-41 / 1-35-9 /13-29-29-7.

YOU ARE GOOD.

51-51-9-35-29 /17-37 / 1 /15-9-35-29.

ZZERO IS A HERO

28-42-26-4-10-36-38 / 2-36-10 / 12-42-28.

NUMBERS ARE FUN. (2 for A, 4 for B…..52 for Z)

Conclusion

Sankhya and Ganith have made friends with numbers. Sometimes the ‘friends’ behave oddly!But most of the time, they are good! Look at the numbers around you.You may find something interesting about them.

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A picture of a young boy, Gopalji.
My name is Gopalji Srivastava. I am in class 5 and never miss a movie by Amitabh Bachchan and Kajol. I also enjoy badmintonand the Bhangra.

Thank you for buying this book. My friends and I will get to read many more books in our library because you bought this book.

Mala Kumar is a journalist, writer and editor based in Bangalore. Her stories for children have won awards from Children’s Book Trust. She discovered her love forteaching while conducting non-formal workshops in Mathematics in schools, using the day’s newspaper instead of text-books.

Angie is a graphic designer and in her spare time loves to keep busy with ceramic. Upesh is an animator who collects graphic novels and catches up with odd films in hisspare time. Together they form ‘The Other Design Studio’.

A picture of Sankhya and Ganith working in a maths book.
This is a Mathematics book with a difference. There are more stories here than problems!So read the stories, take in the mixture of facts and fiction and enjoy teasing your brain.

Titles in this series

Happy Maths 1 : Numbers
Happy Maths 2 : Shapes and Data
Happy Maths 3 : Measurements
Happy Maths 4 : Time and Money

For more information on all our titles please visit www.prathambooks.org

Our books are available in English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, Punjabi, Urdu and Oriya.

Pratham Books is a not-for-profit publisher that produces high-quality and affordable children’s books in Indian languages.

Age Group: 11 - 14 years
Happy Maths - 2 Shapes and Data (English)
MRP: Rs. 25.00

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Source:  OpenStax, Class. OpenStax CNX. Dec 24, 2010 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11261/1.3
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