Target Boards Instructions

Target Boards are a great fun way for your class to practice arithmetic during Maths Week. Pupils won’t even realise they are working! There is a senior section for upper primary schools and a junior section for younger pupils.

Special thanks to Simon Lewis, Principal of Carlow Educate Together for devising this activity. Kevin Gill for coding it and Dr Kieran Murphy for additional algorithms. 

Participants are given a set of 9 numbers. Using any of these numbers (only once in each expression) and the four operators (+, -, *, /) find out how many expressions you can make that equate to the target number. The more the better!

The operators are

+ addition

– Subtraction

* Multiplication

/ Division

You must use * for multiplication and / for division. You can also group parts of the expression using brackets ( ).

1+2+3 = 6

1+2*3 = 7

(1+2)*3 = 9

Simply register and you can begin (registration opens October 2020).

You will be issued with a class code which is used for keeping your entries together (it is not intended as a security tool).

The code will be contained in an email from mathsweek@wit.ie – if you don’t receive it, please check your junk/spam/clutter folders. The code is for Targetboards only, and not for any other section of the website.

If you cant access Targetboards it might mean that you are using an old registration code. Please register again.

A new Target Board will be published for each day of Maths Week.

• Use of repeated operators as in “4++++5” is not allowed as it is not mathematically valid
• Prefixing 0 to given numbers as in “05” for “5” is not allowed to avoid trivial multiple entries
• Brackets that do not affect the order of operations are ignored when determining whether the entry is unique to avoid trivial multiple entries such as “3+5”, “(3+5)”, “((3+5))”, etc.
• There is no unary plus operator, e.g. “4+8” cannot be written as “+4*8”