Twelve days of Christmas in Maths!

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The “Twelve days of Christmas” is a popular song, with some intriguing mathematics embedded in the lyrics. 

  1. How many gifts were given in total?
  2. What was the total cost of the gifts?
  3. If one gift was returned each day following Christmas, what day would it be when there be no gifts left?

 Judy Anne Brown created this lesson plan in 1997 with some interesting explorations of Pascal’s triangle. Sol explained the mathematics of the problem in 2007 at “Wild About Math!” and another author wrote about the song and tetrahedral numbers at “The Math Less Travelled“. Create your own 12 days of Christmas image with free Christmas clip art from KidsLearnCentral.