I played ultimate tonight, and we usually keep score with shoes. Our normal scoring system is to count in base 5. Tonight, I tried to use binary, but at half-time I switched back to base 5 when most of our team struggled to read our score quickly.

I took some pictures of the arrangement of shoes during the game (when I wasn't playing).

I can imagine some investigations could be made out of these photos.

• Given the numbers associated with each photo, try and determine how to count in this number system,
• More challenging: From these photos, try and determine the missing numbers.

If you want a project that might take a while:

• Design a scoring system using shoes. It should be easy to maintain and not require too many shoes.

• David Wees's blog

About David

David is a mathematics teacher and a learning specialist for technology at Stratford Hall in Vancouver, BC. He has been teaching since 2002, and has worked in Brooklyn, London, and Bangkok before moving back to Canada. He has his Masters degree in Educational Technology from UBC, and is the co-author of a mathematics textbook. He has been published in ISTE's Leading and Learning, Educational Technology Solutions, The Software Developers Journal, The Bangkok Post and Edutopia. He blogs with the Cooperative Catalyst, and is the Assessment group facilitator for Edutopia. He has also helped organize the first Edcamp in Canada, and TEDxKIDS@BC.