Math Links for Week Ending Oct 3rd, 2014

We just posted a new activity to our Engaging Math site. This is another activity that will help you randomly sort students into groups. This time it is using some introductory concepts with integers. First students are each given a card, next they find the person who has the card with the representation of the same number. Finally they find another pair who's value, when added together with theirs has a sum of zero. Find more detailed instructions and the downloads at the link below.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
http://engaging-math.blogspot.ca/2014/10/sort-students-into-groups-using-integers.html


This is an interesting video. It asks the questions "Does math exist?" That is, is it just a construct of the human mind or does it actually exist outside in the world.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/06/does-math-exist-outside-the-human-brain/

I love when we can give fun systems of equations questions. And I like this one for a couple of reasons. The first is the presentation. By giving the visuals rather than just giving the information helps the students own the question a bit more. The other thing I like is that it doesn't ask the standard question: "How much does one chocolate one bag of chips cost?" Instead it goes right to another scenario. Of course the other good thing is the fact that this is on the 101qs site that encourages exploring the 3Act task by first letting us ask questions about short videos and images. You should become a member. Thanks to @dydan for this one.
Curriculum Tags: MFM2P, MPM2D
http://www.101qs.com/3166

Kyle at the Tap Into Teen Minds blog has been busy. Here are three of a bunch of new resources (more next week). First he has created a neat iBook on Pythagorean Theorem. It uses resources from the web (like a 3Act task) and interactive quizzes to teach through the idea of the Pythagorean Theorem. Obviously this will only work if you have an iPad or iPhone but it is free and its a nice interactive textbook.
Curriculum Tags: Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P
http://tapintoteenminds.com/2014/09/20/free-pythagorean-theorem-ibook/

Another one from Tap into Teen Minds. This time a nice review of the generation of the volume of a right triangular prism.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P
http://tapintoteenminds.com/2014/09/27/visualizing-the-volume-of-a-triangular-prism-formula/

And finally this week another visualization, this time of the area of a trapezoid. He has been really getting his Keynote on lately.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7
http://tapintoteenminds.com/2014/09/28/visualizing-the-area-of-a-trapezoid-formula/

So I was listening to More or Less and they had a segment on the English game show Countdown. Apparently, it recently set a Guinness record for the longest running TV game show (something like 30 years). Anyway one of the contests on the show is when they give the contestant 6 numbers and with them they have to use mathematical operations to create a random number under 1000. So if you haven't figured it out, this is a game show about order of operations!!!! How cool is that? These are not easy problems but I could see doing a similar type of thing in class as a fun activity. That being said below are a few videos to give you an idea of what goes on. The first one is neat because of how the guy gets the answer without having to actually multiply 318x75. Watch the video then listen to the More or Less podcast (starting at about the 11min mark) to hear the story behind the story.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MFM1P, MPM1D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfa3MHLLSWI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8-mx3RSvOQ