The algorithm

Al-Khwārizmī is the name of a Persian mathematician who lived around the start of the 9th century, and who wrote a book on Mathematics in Arabic. Some 300 years later, (such was the speed at which information was disseminated before the advent of the internet) it was translated in to Latin. The translator, in rendering the author's name from Arabic script into Latin characters corrupted it to "Algoritmi". Because this name was foreign to the readers of the translated book, they did not realise that it was a name, and took it to mean "methods of calculation". Thus the world obtained a new word, "algorithm".
The whole of maths is riddled with algorithms. Indeed, that's how we do maths, we learn the method, we practice the method, and we implement it when we need it. We become part of a machine just performing a routine to solve our maths problem. Just performing a routine can be boring, but it is less boring if we realise that we are part of a machine, and we can imagine all the cogs, wheels and belts, or reels of computer tape and flashing lights that are with us and all around us as we do our bit as part of the machine. Get a lift, imagine yourself as the Central Processing Unit of a vast computer while you do the sums. Suddenly, you're important, rather than a kid who is struggling all alone to process some pointless numbers, who might get snapped at if they make a mistake.
Let's make our children heroic and important when they solve maths problems, let's build their confidence and self-esteem, and make them proud of the fact that they can do maths. This is the aim of Puppet Maths.