LISBON 24 Game inspires matchup

The game's purpose is to make math appealing, accessible and fun.
LISBON -- The Columbiana County Educational Service Center staff is hoping for good weather Friday for the Math 24 competition.
The event will be 9 a.m. to noon at St. George's Catholic Church. The educational service center's mythology fair scheduled last Friday at Leetonia High School was canceled because of a snowstorm.
There will be 89 pupils participating, assisted by the educational service center's teachers of gifted and talented pupils, and professors Nate Ritchie of Youngstown State University and Kathy Johnson of Kent State University Salem Campus.
Vaughn Musser, a coordinator of the center's program for gifted and talented pupils, said the math competition will be based on the 24 Game, a card game designed to strengthen cognitive math skills.
The pupils must use addition, subtraction, multiplication and division to make four numbers on a given card total 24.
Game's intent
Information from the game manufacturers say the intent is for the game to make math appealing, accessible and fun, then pupils can move on to hopefully excel in math, science and related fields.
The answer is always 24, so the pupils can concentrate on the process and patterns of math instead of on what is for many pupils the anxiety of finding the right answer.
The game was created by inventor Robert Sun in 1988, and since then, 24 Game math clubs and the 24 Game Challenge math competitions evolved.