One Penny, Two

"I'm David McAdams. After 30 years of software development, I was looking for something new to do. I turned my attention to math instruction. Through my coursework at Utah Valley University, I learned how critical vocabulary acquisition is to all learning, and especially to math. Math has long been regarded as its having its own language, with its own syntax and symbols. The acquisition of this language has been found to be a barrier to many students. After the completion of my internship, I finished compiling vocabulary words into a comprehensive dictionary, written for middle school and high school students. ""All Math Words Dictionary"" is the culmination of eight years work collecting, classifying and describing all of the words a student might encounter in their studies of algebra, geometry, and calculus. This book has over 3000 entries; more than 140 notations defined; in excess of 790 illustrations; an IPA pronunciation guide; and greater than 1400 formulas and equations. While working on the dictionary, between playing with my grandchildren, I started developing other ideas for math literacy. Pondering the powers of two (2, 4, 8, 16, ...) I decided to use pennies and a dark green convertable sports car as a plot device: Jerry wants to buy a dark green convertible sports car. He just got a magic box that doubles pennies each day. How long before he can buy the car? Will the box stay safe? Will Jerry's car be sold before he has enough money?"