Math Links for Week Ending June 6th, 2014

Here is a nice panel talk (if you have 90 min to kill) on modelling in math with Steven Strogatz (among others). Its a video but there actually isn't much to see. So you could probably just set it playing while you do other work.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://www.worldsciencefestival.com/2014/05/go-figure-predicting-the-world-with-math/

Someone has posted all the videos from Joe Boaler's How to Learn Math course. This is an online course that is meant for parents and teachers (apparently there is a separate course for students). Here is the whole playlist.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPMnjU12_V1Io4AV8OeaK958Kr6EC_ovq

It being NHL playoff time Yummy Math has a data set about the longest overtime games. In the regular season, games can end in a tie but in the payoffs the game must be won or lost so the overtimes just keep coming. Its a small data set of the games with the largest number of over time minutes. A nice little data set that you could use for percentages,single variable dot plots, box & whisker plots, average or standard deviation.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MBF3C, MDM4U
http://www.yummymath.com/2014/longest-nhl-overtime-games-in-history/

And another one from Yummy Math. This time on movie opening weekends. This data set gives the opening weekend gross for blockbuster movies and couples that with the overall gross. It leaves out the overall gross for the new Godzilla movie (since it doesn't exist). This means this data set would be good for interpolation/extrapolation with scatter plots. They get the data from a great website that I have been using for years, Box Office Mojo. So many different metrics about movies that you can use for any class dealing with data.
Curriculum Tags: MAP4C, MDM4U
http://www.yummymath.com/2014/opening-weekend-3/

A three act math task from Kyle over at the Tap Into Teen Minds site. This time with composite area. Because it's dealing with circles that means it's for grade 9 classes only. I hope you like cookies. Check out the first act below and go to the website for the rest.
Curriculum Tags: MFM1P, MPM1D
http://tapintoteenminds.com/3act-math/cookie-cutter/

I am a big fan of performance tasks for summative assessments. So it's no surprise that I like this one from Alex at Slam Dunk Math. There are a lot of things I like about this one. First it's done board wide so across many schools. Secondly it takes several days and the students co construct the information needed for the task. And thirdly there are a lot of ways for students to participate and be involved. I like how Alex has given detailed instructions and info about how things went. I am going to suggest that Alex post the image files associated with each sheet so that if there are any of us who want to use them it will save us time. Thanks to @MaryBourassa for this one. She did it in her class and has a detailed series of posts about how each day went (day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4).
Curriculum Tags: MPM2P
http://slamdunkmath.blogspot.ca/2014/01/using-pictures-to-prepare-for-mfm-2p.html

Here's another one from Alex, this time featuring the cup stacking challenge. I like this for two reasons. One it can be used really easily to visually show the idea of initial value (if you stack them inside each other and keep them linear) and two, I love his pictures of the various cup configurations.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MFM1P, MPM1D, MFM2P
http://slamdunkmath.blogspot.ca/2014/05/open-strategy-cup-stacking.html

When I was at OAME a few weeks ago, I sat in on a session about math tools in the intermediate classroom and learned about the concept of a "field of zeros" when using algebra tiles. So I made this video on how to multiply with them.

Curriculum Tags: Gr8, MFM1P

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOGsZ2PFcI8

I just found out that someone else I know has done a TEDx talk. Take look at Amy Lin talk about what it means to think "math-ishly" and then check out her blog: http://amylin.me/
Curriculum Tags: All
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gW9g8Ofi8A

Can you trademark the Pi symbol? Apparently an artist has tried to do just that (with an added period after it). Then tried to send cease and desist orders to online sites that sold Pi t-shirts. Me thinks the whole thing is performance art though. More info here. Thanks to Mark Esping for this one
Curriculum Tags: All
http://www.wcvb.com/video/buzz60/artist-trademarks-pi-symbol-starts-issuing-cease-and-desist-letters/26310610

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned the Spurious Correlations blog which shows graphs and data of unrelated things that are correlated with each other. I recently found out that these data sets are all found by software that mines the Internet to find unrelated data sets that can be correlated. So that being said, I think I am going to be posting interesting ones as I see them. Here's one that correlates Nicholas Cage films and number of people drowned by falling into a swimming pool.
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
http://www.tylervigen.com/view_correlation?id=9236

This is kind of a neat idea. Make your own math buttons and then sell them on Zazzle. These ones are all to do with calculus. Reminds me a bit of the Big Bang Theory when they made Penny Blossoms (which you can't buy here)
Curriculum Tags: MCV4U
http://untilnextstop.blogspot.ca/2014/05/calculus-buttons.html

Do you need some data that might pique the interest of your students? Who knew there was a punch in the face emoji?
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/the-100-most-used-emojis/