Woolworths and Dominoes (Part 2): Even more mathematical opportunities for parents and teachers!

My last blog about the marketing promotion being run by Woolworths and Disney Pixar attracted so much interest that I thought I would look deeper into the mathematical potential of the whole campaign. Somehow, the incentive of receiving a domino for every $20 spent seems to be very appealing to consumers, young and old. What is it about these little plastic objects that is so attractive? Perhaps the appealing aspect of the dominoes is the fact that children can actually play with these, as opposed to collections of character cards that are usually given away in such promotions.

So why are the dominoes appealing to teachers like me? My research on student engagement with mathematics has shown that when children have an interest in something, they are more likely to want to learn. They also like to use concrete materials to help them learn – things they can see, touch and manipulate (as opposed to the traditional maths worksheets and textbooks). In the case of Woolworths and dominoes, this is a perfect opportunity for parents and teachers alike to seize this amazing opportunity, take advantage of the hype and do some really good, interesting mathematics!

During the week, as I watched the statistics on my blog increase, I thought I would explore the Woolworths web site and dig around a little. I didn’t find too much of interest, although they have made an effort to publish some very basic educational ideas relating to the dominoes. What I did find, however, was that people are actually selling dominoes on eBay! You can buy whole sets (of characters), individual dominoes of specific characters (some up to $3 each), or unopened dominoes. At this point my head started to hurt…..so many mathematical possibilities! Imagine children investigating the cost of dominoes (in shopping dollars), compared to the apparent worth of dominoes as advertised on eBay. All week I have had fantastic (well, I think they’re fantastic) ideas popping into my head, and these are a few that you might want to try out at home (if you are a parent), or at school, if you are a teacher. I will begin my list with simple tasks for younger children, and finish it with more complex tasks for older children:

• How many dominoes do you think you could hold in one hand? Try it and see if you were right or wrong. How close were you? What if you could use two hands? How many dominoes can you hold? Is this the same as an adult?
• How many dominoes have a one dot? Two dot? Three dot pattern?
• If I lay my dominoes flat, end to end (the short end), how long will my line be? How many dominoes will I need if I wanted to make a flat line that is as long as my foot? My leg? My arm? My body?
• Keep your character doubles, and use pairs of doubles to play a game of memory.
• Using the picture side of the dominoes (the characters are numbered), order the dominoes from 1 to 44.
• Are you missing any dominoes? What numbers are missing and how do you know?
• Using the picture side of the dominoes, imagine that the number of the character is equivalent to its worth. That is, character number 1 is worth $1, character number 2 is worth $2, etc. What would be the value of your collection? If you had every domino from number 1 to number 44, what is it worth?
• If I lined up my dominoes so they were standing (like in the photo), what would be the best distance apart (if they’re too close together, you might knock them down accidently).
• How many (standing) dominoes would you need to make a line of 1 metre? Imagine you needed to make a domino line for one kilometre – can you use the number of dominoes you have to work out how many dominoes you would need? How much would you have to spend at Woolworths to have enough dominoes?
• How long would it take to knock down a one metre line of standing up dominoes? Who can make the longest line?
• I received 18 dominoes with my shopping this week. How much did I spend?
• Do you think the Woolworths marketing campaign has been successful? Design a set of survey questions and conduct some research at your school. Analyse your data and prepare a report that you could send to the Chief Executive Officer of Woolworths.

Of course, there are many more ideas – perhaps there will be a Part 3 blog post over the Easter weekend. Oh, and by the way, Woolworths are giving away ‘double’ dominoes at the moment – this opens up another world of mathematical opportunity!