Cheryl's Birthday

We present four logic puzzles and after that their solutions. Joseph Yeo designed 'Cheryl's Birthday'. Mike Hartley came up with a novel solution for 'One Hundred Prisoners and a Light Bulb'. Jonathan Welton designed 'A Blind Guess' and 'Abby's Birthday'. Hans van Ditmarsch and Barteld Kooi authored the puzzlebook 'One Hundred Prisoners and a Light Bulb' that contains other knowledge puzzles, and that can also be found on the webpage http://personal.us.es/hvd/lightbulb.html dedicated to the book.Comment: In Proceedings TARK 2017, arXiv:1707.0825

Mirror - Vol. 27, No. 26 - May 02, 2002

The Mirror (sometimes called the Fairfield Mirror) is the official student newspaper of Fairfield University, and is published weekly during the academic year (September - May). It runs from 1977 - the present; current issues are available online.https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/archives-mirror/1574/thumbnail.jp

Changing self-limiting mindsets of young mathematically gifted students to assist talent development

The aim of this study was to explore the impact of classroom teachers receiving professional learning about students who are mathematically gifted, but who may display self-limiting mindset tendencies. There has been an emerging emphasis on affective impacts in education in general (Duckworth & Gross, 2014; Dweck, 2015), and in mathematics learning specifically (Boaler, 2016; Williams, 2014), on nurturing positive, non-cognitive learner dispositions, or mindsets. However, there seems to be little research, and limited discussion in the literature, about the effect of mathematically gifted students’ mindsets – of how they perceive themselves as learners of mathematics – and the impact this has on their ongoing mathematics learning, and transforming their gifts into talents (Gagné, 2003). The development of positive learner mindsets in students who are mathematically gifted could have profound implications for these students as individuals, as well as for the future of society as a whole, as their gifts continue to be realised, enhanced and transformed into talents. The research design adopted for the study was a case study with a narrative analysis. The case was the phenomenon of mathematically gifted students who display self-limiting mindset tendencies, with three students at three different levels of primary school identified for the study. The case study, a descriptive research design, was used to observe and describe the effect of teacher professional learning on the mathematics learning and mindsets of these three students, over a three to four-month period. Data were collected from parent and teacher questionnaires, pre- and post-professional learning interviews with students and teachers, and observations of mathematics classroom lesson involvement. A narrative analysis process was adopted, with direct interpretation from data being the dominant approach, as the findings were to be a description of happenings rather than a frequency of happenings (Stake, 1995). The narrative analytic procedure used was based around the seven criteria for narrative case study first proposed by Dollard (1935), and revised by Polkinghorne (1995). Analyses and interpretations of data from this study show evidence of the targeted teacher professional learning having a positive impact on the three case study students’ mindsets about successful mathematics learning, and on their approaches to mathematics learning, especially their approaches to challenging tasks. It seems targeted professional learning may be valuable for teachers to develop an understanding of how support for mathematically gifted students is essential, and what it entails. Generalisations from a qualitative case study are limited because, by definition, it is a bounded system specific to a small number of individuals in a particular environment (Stake, 1995). However, if, as the findings of this study show, mindsets of mathematically gifted students can be nurtured (and changed if necessary) the implications could be profound if this does, indeed, enable extraordinary capabilities, or gifts, to be realised, enhanced and transformed into talents (Gagné, 2003). This research may also provide a valuable addition, or a ‘link in the chain' to the current knowledge base of mathematically gifted students, and how educators can best support their successful on-going learning. It hopefully provides further highlights, and uncovers new understandings of classroom support required for mathematically gifted students

SMCDEL v1.1.0:A symbolic model checker for Dynamic Epistemic Logic.

New: minimization under bisimulation dynamic operators in formulas via Data.Dynamic multipointed models, action models, structures and events added Cheryl's Birthday and Cheryl's Age examples experimental functions for epistemic planning (with small examples) more instances for QuickCheck, more tests add S5 to K conversion in SMCDEL.Translations.Convert improvements to the web interface Changed: polymorphic update replaces productUpdate, transform, pubAnnounce etc. factual change by default: merge Symbolic.S5.Change into Symbolic.S5 etc. remove changeprops in (Kn)Trf to avoid redundancy with changelaw move BDD related functions to HasCacBDD (substit, substitSimul) avoid Data.Map in S5 modules, no longer depend on lens replace .cabal file with a package.yml for hpac