FASHION, PAPER DOLLS AND MULTIPLICATIVES

There are artistically talented people, then there are people like Noel Cruz, the man who created the Angelina doll that recently sold on eBay (for a price that was almost as impressive as the doll, itself): £2,000!
The artist took an ordinary doll, removed the factory paint, then re-touched the face with acrylics to capture Miss Jolie’s features. Perfectly.
Ken’s getting pretty worked up, so Barbie’s lining up a series of short-term relationships and embarassing interviews. Just in case.
Suzana Kaori Ura, Alzira C. M. Stein-Barana and Deisy P. Munhoz share the resources they have been developing to facilitate the understanding of multiplication.
The multiplicative principle is the tool allowing the counting of groups that can be described by a sequence of events. An event is a subset of sample space, i.e. a collection of possible outcomes, which may be equal to or smaller than the sample space as a whole. If event A can occur in m different ways, event B in n different ways and event B is independent of event A, then the event (A followed by B) can occur in m�n ways.
It is important that students understand this basic principle early on and know how to apply it, because it is the basis for more complex subjects such as Combinatorics, Probability and Statistics gathering.
Our objective is to facilitate children's understanding of the multiplicative principle through a cooperative, entertaining and enjoyable activity: making fashion! Here we propose the use of paper dolls for teaching the multiplicative principle. The paper dolls we refer to are paper cutouts, with separately cut clothes and accessories, an inexpensive toy used by many generations. In the early 20 th century its popularity increased as they were presented in newspapers and magazines. The use of clothing combinations is certainly not new in order to exemplify the application of the multiplicative principle, but the use of paper dolls as a didactic resource helps the understanding of mathematical concepts through the manipulation of concrete objects. With this toy children's imagination, creativity and logic can be stimulated by the various possibilities it offers.