Engaging Mathematicians with a Murder Mystery

Abstract

It is Friday, and I greet my tenth-grade geometry students in the hall. My door is closed and the lights are off; already my students know that something is happening. They are firing questions at me, which I respond to with the facial equivalent of “wait and see.” As the bell rings and the hall clears of everyone except my curious mathematicians and me, I announce, “Last night, there was an altercation at the school, and Mr. E was murdered in my classroom. I need you to figure out who did it.”