What Is Equivalent in Math?

Equivalent Numbers Bingo Game

Reminder:

• Equivalent numbers are numbers that have the same value.
• Each type of number, such as fractions, decimals, or square roots, can be equivalent to other numbers of their types, or to numbers of different types, as long as they have the same value.

Materials Needed:

• Bingo cards with various numbers on them in a rectangular pattern
• Bingo chips
• A bucket or container of numbers on pieces of paper, such that the numbers on the bingo cards are equivalent to these numbers.

Directions and Rules:

1. Hand out bingo cards and bingo chips to each player. This can be played alone or with a group. However many bingo cards you have is the number of people that can play.
2. Pull a number out of the number bucket.
3. Each player places a bingo chip on any number on their card that is equivalent to the number pulled from the bucket.
4. This continues until someone gets a row, column, or diagonal of chips on their card. At this point, the person with a full row, column, or diagonal says "equivalent numbers bingo".
5. Whoever gets a correct equivalent numbers bingo first wins the game.

Sample Round of One Number Being Pulled From the Number Bucket

Gary and Fiona are playing equivalent numbers bingo. The first number pulled from the bucket is 0.2. Fiona sees that she has the number √(0.04) and the number 2/10 on her card. First, she looks at √(0.04). She knows that 22 = 4, so she sees a possible connection between 0.2 and √(0.04), and decides to calculate √(0.04).

• √(0.04) = 0.2

Sure enough, she finds that √(0.04) = 0.2, so she knows that these two numbers are equivalent, and she places a chip over √(0.04). She then considers the number 0.2 as a fraction. Since the 2 is in the tenths place, the number is read as two-tenths, so she knows that the fraction, 2/10, is equivalent to 0.2, so she places a chip over that number as well.

Gary is looking at his card, and doesn't see anything that looks equivalent to 0.2, but he knows that if he performs the division indicated by the fractions on his card, then he could find that they actually do have the same value as 0.2. There are two fractions on his card; 3/8 and 1/5, so he performs the division for each of these.

• 3 ÷ 8 = 0.375
• 1 ÷ 5 = 0.2

He sees that 3/8 has a decimal value of 0.375, so this is not equivalent to 0.2. However, he also sees that 1/5 has a decimal value of 0.2, so this is equivalent to 0.2, and he places a chip over 1/5. After this, the next number is pulled from the bucket, and they play until one of them gets an equivalence number bingo.