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As a group of homeschool families, we attend Kennedy Center shows as a “school group.” Normally, we are seated as a “school” and don’t receive printed tickets. This time, though, the show was very popular and sold out. Our tickets were in several groups, the education director explained. She was sorry we weren’t all able to sit together. I stared at the tickets with the other moms in our group, wondering how to place the children. We had D 137 as well as D 1, D 3, D 5, and D 7. Turns out, these seats are consecutive, with D 137 being across the aisle in the center section. This was a surprise to me.

I did a little research.

“Why do theaters group the seats by odd and even numbers?”

Turns out I am not the only one with this question. All kinds of people had posted comments such as “I accidentally bought every other seat, but I wanted to be sitting next to my friends!”

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So, here’s my great idea for bringing more math into the theater! Why not make the seat numbers into fractions? Imagine how much math people would need to learn if they had seat numbers: 8/13, 2/3 and 11/15. People would need to do the conversion of fractions to decimals in order to find their seats!
This is a way to bring more STEM into the theater! We could put prime numbers in the center and make sure that repeating decimals were the most desirable seats! Let’s work a little bit while we linger in the lobby to keep our mental math strong!!