Activity Description Give input to the Whole Number Cruncher and try to guess what it did from the output it generates. This activity only generates multiplication and addition functions to avoid outputting any negative numbers. Whole Number Cruncher is one of the Interactivate assessment explorers.

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Whole Number Cruncher

Place in mathematics curriculum:

This activity can be used to:

• Teach properties of linear functions
• Explore problem solving techniques

This activity allows the user to to explore whole number linear functions by determining the rule that the number cruncher machine is following. Students can enter numbers and use the result to determine what the function is. This activity would work well in small groups of 3-4 for about 20 minutes if you use the exploration questions and 10 minutes otherwise.

Preparations for this activity:

• Encourage students to not give up and give hints if they are stuck
• Explain the properties of a function
• After the students have been working, explain a higher level strategy for finding the result: use 0 first and if the result is a whole number then that is the +/- component; if the result is 0, then it is a multiplication situation and plugging in 1 will find the solution.