Math Links for Week Ending November 7th, 2014

This video from Phil Daro suggests why in North America our math students do so poorly compared to other countries.

When I look at hundreds of hours of videos of Japanese classrooms where they get high performance from ordinary teachers and hundreds of hours of US classrooms where we get ordinary performance from very good teachers. I see the goal of the Japanese teacher is different from the goal of the US teacher. The American teacher looks at a problem they are going to use in a lesson and asks themselves, "how can I teach my kids to get the answer to this problem?" The Japanese teacher asks "what's the mathematics the students are supposed to learn from working on this problem?" - Phil Daro

Answer getting, that seems to be the issue. Watch the video and then take a look at Keith Devlin's post on it.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://devlinsangle.blogspot.ca/2014/11/against-answer-getting.html

A new video from TED-ED. And although it may not seem like there is a connection to a specific math problem, when they talk about the model for the turbulence it is shown to vary as the 5/3rds power. So when kids are asking where rational powers fits in the world, here is an application that comes from the art world
Curriculum Tags: MCR3U, MCF3M, MAP4C, MCT4C
http://ed.ted.com/lessons/the-unexpected-math-behind-van-gogh-s-starry-night-natalya-st-clair

We really like this activity which is basically a tweak of a very common activity done by most teachers when having students learn about scatterplots. In this case we normally have students measure their various body parts and then compare them to see if there is a relationship. The twist here is that we include comparisons that kids can make to real people about their heights, arm spans, foot size and hand size. See all of our templates here
Curriculum Tags: MPM1D, MFM1P, MDM4U, MAP4C
http://engaging-math.blogspot.ca/2014/10/how-do-i-compare-to-michael-phelps.html

Annie from the Math Forum talking about apps to help support conceptual learning. Apps include a sketchpad sketch that deals with types of triangles, an app that introduces the idea of distance time graphs, an app that introduces the idea of systems of equations and algebra tiles.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, MPM1D, MFM1D, MPM2D, MFM2P
http://mathforum.org/blogs/annie/2014/11/06/using-technology-to-increase-conceptual-understanding-in-algebra-and-geometry-pctm/

I love this activity by Nat Banting. There are all sorts of ways you can demonstrate the concept of conditional probability. But playing egg roulette might be the best of them all.
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
http://musingmathematically.blogspot.ca/2014/10/egg-roulette.html

For a free download (for a limited time) you can download this journal from the Association of Teachers of Mathematics.
MT243_Full_Journal.pdf

Kyle at Tap into Teen Minds has been producing these videos which are intended for students. They look slick and could easily be referenced as review or remedial or for a flipped classroom model. In this one the idea is the trend line of a scatterplot.
Curriculum Tags: MPM1D, MFM1P, MDM4U, MAP4U
http://tapintoteenminds.com/2014/10/10/visualizing-two-variable-relationships/

Leave it to Dan Meyer to take a boring pseudo math concept and add a tweak to make it more palatable. Take the coin problem "You have 50 dimes and quarters and they total $11. How many of each do you have?" Why not start with a real application of this in the video below. Then get to the actual problem incrementally. IE just ask how many of each could add to $11. And then move on. Take a look at the blog post.
Curriculum Tags: MPM2D, MFM2P
http://blog.mrmeyer.com/2014/these-horrible-coin-problems-and-what-we-can-do-about-them/

So fun, why not use hashtags when commenting on student assessments?
Curriculum Tags: All
http://www.mathycathy.com/blog/2014/10/just-playin/

I know that Halloween is over but still I like this interactive graph of the most popular costumes over the last few years. Click on any item and see the broken line graph appear.
Curriculum Tags: Gr8, MDM4U, MAP4C
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/27/359324848/witches-vampires-and-pirates-5-years-of-americas-most-popular-costumes

Want some data on weight loss. Here are a couple of bar graphs that try to determine which are the most useful diets.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MBF3C, MDM4U
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/which-diet-will-help-you-lose-the-most-weight/

And one more for Halloween. This time an infographic on the healthiest candies

Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MBF3C, MDM4U

http://lifehacker.com/halloween-candy-ranked-by-healthiness-1652824186