Math Links for Week Ending Apr 5th, 2013

I really like the simplicity of the game Rock-Paper-Scissors for introducing probability concepts. Maybe its because its a game that is easily played and most kids have done so or maybe because of the allure of  the Rock Paper Scissors World Championships. And of course the natural extension of this is Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock. Watch Sheldon explain the rules of that below. The nice thing about both of those games is that all choices are equally likely to win. They are fair games (though the RPS society claims there are strategies that work). But I listened to an old episode of Radiolab on randomness called Stochasticity and then the follow up podcast called Are We Coins. And in that show they talked about the game Schnick-Schnack-Schnook where the variation is there is a 4th gesture called "Well". The scissors & rock both fall into the well but the paper covers the well. This introduces an element that means the game is no longer fair. So playing this game can be a great introduction to fairness in games.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MBF3

Here is a nice set of data that could be used when talking about distributions in Data Management
http://www.blog.republicofmath.com/unemployment data
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U




New activities from TI for the nSpire and TI-84. This time box plots& histograms, circle equations, exponential growth, parabolas and more.
http://link.ti-enews.com/TIActivities
Curriculum Tags, MPM2D, MCR3U, MCF3M, MBF3C, MAP4C, MDM4U

Last week I posted a picture of a tree root removed from the ground with the caption Square Root. Rather quickly Gregory Taylor sent the more correct image below. Thanks.
http://i.chzbgr.com/completestore/2011/11/6/e2f898c5-b90b-45cc-addf-9e908e447cc8.jpg
Curriculum Tags: MPM1D

A fun cartoon for distributions
http://i.stack.imgur.com/T2XrE.gif
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U

Here is a very cool data visualization of the world population based on latitude and longitude. Thanks to Mark Esping for this one.
http://www.geekosystem.com/world-population-latitude-longitude/

Curriculum Tags: MDM4U

Perhaps a little late but here is a nice infographic about candy and Easter. Thanks to Mark Esping for this one.

http://degreesearch.org/blog/easter-by-the-numbers-infographic/
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MBF3C, MDM4U