Math Links for Week Ending April 17th, 2015

In Ontario, we are luck to have a team that puts together virtual manipulatives in the form of the CLIPS package. More recently, however, they have started to delve into the app stage. First with their Rekenrek app and now with two new ones. The first is one to help students represent money using images taken from the Canadian mint. The second one is more of a drawing pad that uses either isometric dot paper or a grid. Both of these are available from the App and the Google Play stores. And don't forget to also check out all the offerings on the Mathies.ca site on their Tools page.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MAT1L, MAT2L
http://mathfest.blogspot.ca/2015/04/two-new-learning-tools-available.html

We added another Tarsia Puzzle to our Engaging Math Blog. The puzzles are a nice quick way to practice skills. Check out the link for the full description. This one is on converting between factions, decimals and percents.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P
http://engaging-math.blogspot.ca/2015/04/tarsia-puzzle-fractionsdecimals-and.html







A few weeks ago I let you know about a new site called WODB (Which On Doesn't Belong. The idea is that you show students a set of four pictures and they have to determine which one doesn't belong. And one of the nice things is that there is a way that each of the four pictures might not belong. So now Mary at the Making Math Meaningful has a tweak. Show them only three (or two images) and have them figure out what that fourth image could be. Nicely done.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://marybourassa.blogspot.ca/2015/04/wodb-incomplete-sets.html



Another straggler from Pi Day. Asking the question: for which of these cylinders is the height more than the  circumference. And getting a surprising result when considering the can of tennis balls. This reminds me a bit of this one from Andrew Stadel.
Curriculum Tags: Gr8
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2015/03/14/how-many-digits-of-pi-do-you-really-need-to-know-find-out-with-this-bar-bet/

If you were on Facebook this week then you probably saw that Singapore math problem about Cheryl's birthday. Spoiler alert, here is a solution from Numberphile as well as one done by Hamilton Tigercats (CFL for you Americans) lineman @Peterdyakowski. Here are both videos. I like Peter's because it's short and sweet and I like the systematic way that Numberphile goes about it.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emiMj8cCL5E
http://www.macleans.ca/multimedia/video/the-macleans-genius-explains-how-he-solved-the-viral-singapore-equation/

Follow the link on this one to see a neat video on comparing the fastest Olympic 100m swim times from the late 1800s on. I'm still not as fast as the slowest guy here.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr7, MBF3C, MDM4U, MAP4C
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/08/01/sports/olympics/racing-against-history.html?_r=0

Dear Data is a project where two women who live in other parts of the world document their lives through data about themselves via postcards. The thing I like about this is all the cool representations of data. I think that you could replicate this in a class where students create data postcards about themselves. Give it a try.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MBF3C, MDM4U, MAP4C
http://www.dear-data.com/

I am not sure how we came up with this but me and a colleague of mine thought of what if you could have something to help you out when you were having difficulty with a math problem. And that lead to Mathtercard. Thanks to my son for doing the Photoshop work.
https://twitter.com/davidpetro314/status/587429508929740800/photo/1

What do you do when you don't have the knowledge to solve a math problem? Use Mathtercard credit to help #mathchat pic.twitter.com/Qr2w6IgJx4
— David Petro (@davidpetro314) April 13, 2015

It's always neat to find some interesting representation of data. In this case, it's no so much the representation but the comparison. When ever we deal with big numbers, it's important to have context. This could also be used when teaching the idea of exponents or scientific notation. Make sure you look at the Google+ link for more info.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MBF3C, MDM4U
https://plus.google.com/117663015413546257905/posts/B16McQB6Vn2