This post is inspired by my AP Calculus BC class. At the beginning of each of our seven day rotations, I give them a problem set. These problem sets are pretty wide ranging, some Calculus questions, but mostly wide open fun problems to explore. Here is a problem from the set that was due today (actually due yesterday, but we were snowed out):
Starting at the origin, a bug jumps one unit either left, right, up, or down. He jumps once each second. List the possible locations (and probabilities associated with those locations) that the bug could be after 6 seconds.
I have given them variations of this where the intrepid bug could only move left or right. I thought that this would be an intriguing extension. During my library duty nine nights ago one of my students spent about 15 minutes with me bouncing ideas around. We came up with the GeoGebra sketch below: 
This seemed pretty daunting and I admitted to him that I may have overreached with this problem. We shared our conversation the next day with the whole class, including showing this intimidating graph. Trying to figure out how many of the 4096 pathways could lead to each point felt overwhelming. A couple of students started tossing out ideas but I kind of encouraged them to let this problem slide and blame me for poor planning.
When the problem sets came in today three of my students discussed some coding attacks that they took. Two of them were collaborating late into the night working on an approach to the problem and the output from their attack is below:
They took over the class conversation today pointing out that they recognized a pattern based on a multiplication table where the column header AND the row header were each the 6th row of Pascal’s Triangle. The numbers in their printout above are the products of this table. A long explanation invoking a three dimensional Pascal’s Triangle (I thought of layers like oranges in a conical pile) was presented with great enthusiasm. Some of the kids in class kind of glazed out, but a number were fully engaged. I was engaged, awed, and slightly confused. I have asked the two who collaborated on this if they would be willing to be guest bloggers here and they seem amenable to that idea. I hope to have a follow up, in their words, in the next day or two.
I am SO spoiled to be able to sit back and learn from students who could have easily left this problem alone, but were unsatisfied with that notion.