The Chess and Mathematics Connection

Thomas J. Norris March 22, 2004 The Chess and Mathematics Connection: More Than Just a Game By Robert M. Berkmani

The article suggests that playing chess requires a wide range of skills and aptitudes that will help develop students: anticipation, sequential analysis, making hypotheses and proving or disproving them, spatial organization, memory and powers of concentration. As an intellectual activity that provides many opportunities for decision- making, initiative, originality and creativity, the article also indicates chess gives students an opportunity to show sound judgment. In addition, chess is a fascinating game that children adore and never tire of exploring it. Unlike the “Mozart Effect”, where children listen to classical music showed some improvement in low-level arithmetic skills, the “Chess Effect” operates at the higher level of thinking and has a life long positive effect on the student’s ability to solve problems. When the author of the article introduce Pascal’s triangle as one the concepts learned from the movement of the rook on the chessboard I was very impress, (took a while to remember what Pascal’s triangles was all about, but when I did; it was impressive.) This was just one of many math concepts students could explore from learning the game of chess. If we could teach all students to play chess, our middle school test scores will increase and our student’s level of understanding would rise dramatically. Benjamin Franklin stated that “Chess taught players foresight, circumspection, and caution.” These are qualities we would like to instill in our middle school students. i Berkman, Robert M. (2004, January). The Chess and Mathematics Connection: More Than Just a Game. Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School, Volume 9, Number 5, 246-250.