24 Game A Test of Skill and Timing

The competition will be intense when 160 students from 15 Yonkers Public Schools participate in the 24 Game Math Competition Wednesday June 4, 2008 from 3:30 p.m.-5:30 p.m. at the Yonkers Middle/High School Arena, 150 Rockland Avenue in Yonkers. The competition has grown from a handful of schools three years ago to 15 this year:

• School 22
• School 23
• School 30
• Family 32
• Martin Luther King
• Montessori 11
• Paideia 15
• PEARLS Hawthorne
• Scholastic Academy
• Commerce Middle School
• Emerson Middle School
• Mark Twain Middle School
• Lincoln High School
• Yonkers Middle
• Yonkers High School

The Object of 24 Game is to make the number 24 from the four numbers on a game card. You can add, subtract, multiply and divide. Use all four numbers on the card, but use each number only once. You do not have to use all four operations. All number nines will have a red center, so you can tell a nine from a six.

The brains behind the game, inventor Robert Sun says “Knowing the answer is always 24 alleviates a classic brand of math anxiety—getting the right answer—and instead puts the emphasis on the process and patterns, what I like to call ‘the method behind the math.’ ”