Unit 3 Lab 4: Magic Squares

BH: #4 is way underspecified. As an earlier example pointed out, they could just make a list of nine copies 1/3 of the target sum. Is that an okay solution? Or are the numbers supposed to be all different? Etc.
JK response: Didn't address this comment yet. First of all, I think the student can probably decide how complicated to make it - sure, they could make a square with all of the same number, but that's not terribly challenging (unless they're actually playing with how best to display it on the screen or something, which could be where they choose to go with this). Also, there are lots of really involved problems in this take it further... I kept it as Bowen wrote it for now, but perhaps some of these problems belong elsewhere?

Make the Is a magic square? block.

There is more than one good way to write this code. After you've written Is a magic square? , see if anyone in the class has a method different from yours.

Here are some magic squares to test (from Getting Started):

Teacher Feedback: These TIF questions (especially toward the end) are way too hard for the HS level. The teacher who mentioned this said that when they did research on their own to answer these questions, they found that the prime magic square stuff has only even come out very recently. So, this is just way too much. We might need to think about an upper limit on difficultly for TIF problems. We want challenging stuff, but not over the top. --MF

Build a magic square checker for 2-by-2 squares.
... for 4-by-4 squares.
Challenge ... for n-by-n squares.
Build a magic-square generator given a target sum as input.
Challenge Find a 3-by-3 magic square made up entirely of prime numbers.

Finishing Touches