Little House math

[magid]

I was rereading some Laura Ingalls Wilder books over Shabbat, and kept noticing math problems left and right, especially in West from Home and her travel diary about moving to the "Land of the Big Red Apple."

I started wondering where I could put these math questions. I suppose I'd have to get permission if I wanted to quote excerpts from the books, too.

I've had this happen before, reading books and having word problems want to be written (I suppose other people manage to read books without word problems leaping out at them?). I remember it happening very clearly when learning Eruvin (the mishna, not the gemara), thinking how I could turn it into a couple of chapters on plane geometry, then thinking I could have some 3-D geometry (volumes and surface areas, anyway) using the design of ritual objects. And I did do that whole Purim math quiz, too.

I never did write up any questions (other than the Purim quiz), but I wonder just how long it would take me to type in word problems when I see them, even if just for my own entertainment (don't even start, I know that's warped)? I suppose somewhere there might be teachers who would use them to link literature and math, or halacha and math, etc.
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Comments

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

If you did more of them with a Jewish religious bent maybe you could pitch a textbook that would be used at Solomon Schecter (and other Jewish) schools to your company? It might get you out of some of the doldrums and you'd get to run a project that maybe you'd like running.

[magid.livejournal.com]

If I did do a Jewish math-y thing, I suppose I could pitch it to a religious publisher, but it wouldn't fly here. It wouldn't earn enough for it to be worth their (big, multinational corporation) money.

Also, even if they did it (and with the religion side of it, it wouldn't be in my department, maybe in custom publishing), it would likely be done as an outside contract, anyway.

Maybe once/if I write some stuff up, I'll see how motivated I am and how much I can cover, then see if one of the religious educational publishers would be interested, though.

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

If you pitch it to your current publisher and they say No, at that point you basically have the right to pitch it elsewhere. Just make sure that *if* you do it you don't work on it during your normal work hours.

If it's too much for a one-person effort, don't forget that you have friends locally who can help and I think a relative or two who'd be interested too. I think it would be interesting. (Of course my life is *so* dull now.... but it would be neat to do and I think I do have enough time/energy to help)