A new game based on Minecraft aims to teach people of all ages about some cool math ideas. By combining the bestselling game of all time with some well-known brain teasers, university mathematician David Strütt hopes to bring math thinking down to (pixelated) Earth.
Matheminecraft puts players in a classic math puzzle called an Eulerian cycle, which you’ve almost definitely tried before. Can you draw a star without crossing your own line or lifting your pen? This means going outside the typical Spirograph-ish way we draw these stars and doing it totally freehand, and indeed, it’s also an Eulerian cycle.
This kind of drawing is often called a single line or continuous line drawing, and it’s a popular challenge for art and puzzles. In a way, working a maze is a continuous line drawing, if you do it right with no doubling back. All of these, and Euler’s work in general, represent a kind of math called graph theory—the same field that includes the classic traveling salesperson problem.
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In Matheminecraft, players face a graph that has one path all the way through, and choosing a path turns what came before into lava. This is how Strütt says he ensures players can’t double back, and it’s also tapping into shared vocabulary of childhood games (“the floor is lava!”) and video games. Some games that seem simple, like Snake and its many copycats, end up acting like Eulerian cycles because the length of the snake prevents you from doubling over your path.MUST-READSThe Amazing Math Inside the Rubik’s CubeCan You Solve This Viral Triangle Brain Teaser?The Hardest Traveling Salesman Problem, SolvedADVERTISEMENT – CONTINUE READING BELOW
In just a few examples of Eulerian thinking, it’s easy to see why this one mathematical idea is so influential. Strütt also chose Minecraft very intentionally—the game is popular with children to an extent that rivals LEGO bricks, Strütt says, and yet is a system in which a computer scientist can build a Turing-complete machine. He plans to make a more advanced version of the game where older players can face a bigger challenge.
So far, the game has been rolled out in workshops sponsored by the math and science outreach teams at Strütt’s university, the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. “During 4 weeks, 36 classes of children—8 to 10 years old—registered to visit EPFL and took part in a two hours matinée where they played Matheminecraft and did various chemistry experiments,” EPFL wrote in a statement.
Now, it’s likely those same children are being homeschooled for the rest of their school year, and Matheminecraft is available to download for both PCs and Macs. The documentation is in French, but chances are good that the children you want to show Matheminecraft to already know how to install Minecraft. If not, maybe someone will make a learning tool inside Fortnite.
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