Using Symbolic Computation to analyze some Children's Board Games

Abstract

In a delightful article that recently appeared in Mathematics Magazine, David and Lori Mccune analyze the board game "Count Your Chickens!", recommended to children three and up. Alas, they use the advanced theory of Markov chains, that presupposes a knowledge of linear algebra, that few three-years-olds are likely to understand. Here we present a much simpler, more intuitive, approach, that while unlikely to be understood by three-year-olds, will probably be understood by a smart 14-year-old. Moreover, our approach accomplishes much more, and is more efficient. It uses symbolic, rather than numeric computation.