After considering all the possibilities in an organized list, students are ready to arrange their data in a more structured format, such as a table or graph. When students are able to think of organized ways to represent their information, they are more likely to recognize patterns that will help them make generalizations that lead to the problem's solution.

Try the following problem, and be aware of how you organize the information.

Mr. Lucky just won the state lottery -- $1 million! He thinks about how he is going to spend this windfall and finally comes up with the following plan: He will spend $1 the first day, $2 the second day, $4 the third day -- in other words, each day's amount is double the amount of the previous day. How long will it take Mr. Lucky to spend the entire million?

A table similar to the following could be used:

This problem can be extended to introduce other mathematical concepts, such as: Operations in base-2, Graphic representations of 2^x, and natural logarithms.

  Look at another method for organizing data