Friday, May 27, 2016

Math Links for Week Ending May 27th, 2014

I have actually got a lot of data sets that I have to post about on my Found Data blog. On this blog I highlight data sets that can be used to teach stats and put them in an easily downloadable form. This set comes from Ontario gas prices and was pointed out to me by Michael Lieff. There is actually 25 years of data available in one year chunks, but I was able to download all the data in one place here.
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U, MAP4C
http://found-data.blogspot.ca/2016/05/gas-prices-in-ontario.html

This is a really simple activity from @natbanting's blog that can be used to help student practice order of operations. You set up the structure, then roll the dice and students try to make an expression that is either really big or small etc. One thing I like is the rule about students having to place the numbers as they come without waiting until all appear.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
http://musingmathematically.blogspot.ca/2016/05/min-max-imize-classroom-game-for-basic.html

TED-ED talks are typically short and usually have extentions and mini lessons attached. This new one is no exception as it talks about the history of the irrational number
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
http://ed.ted.com/lessons/making-sense-of-irrational-numbers-ganesh-pai

And keeping with the TED theme, @JoBoaler's TEDx talk was just published and although there really isn't anything new hear. It's a nice summary of all of the things that she has been talking about for years.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3icoSeGqQtY

Personally I use a similar product called Nearpod but have been intrigued by Peardeck. There are some features that Peardeck has that Nearpod doesn't and vice versa. At first glance, though, it seemed like Peardeck's features that I liked only existed in the paid version. However, I was intrigued by some of the features that @wheeler_laura pointed out in one of her recent sketchnotes
Curriculum Tags: All
https://mslwheeler.wordpress.com/2016/05/05/pear-deck-interactive-slideshows-edtech/

Friday, May 20, 2016

Math Links for Week Ending May 20th, 2016

For years I have always talked about the nature of big numbers with my data management students. Every year I had them find a big number and then try to analyze it to determine whether it is really big. For example, here in Canada, recently there was a $79 million DRAM settlement. But with 4 million potential litigants expected, that means about a $20 settlement for each person. So this new (to me) site was pointed out to me and it totally resonated with me. Is That a Big Number is a site that takes big numbers and looks for context, has conversion apps and quizzes and facts. Check it out.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MDM4U
http://www.isthatabignumber.com/

I have certainly spent my time as a traditional teacher but I think that as I age, I become more nuanced. So where I used to be a staunch advocate of the balance method for solving equations as being the Holy Grail, discounting anything else as inferior, now I see the value in intuition. Giving students a more attainable feel for solving equations, I think, is a far better way to start the on that path. So when dealing with one and two step equations, this method of using a double number line is a very neat way to help students truly understand what it means to solve and equation. See how @MrOrr_Geek gives a step by step on how to use this method on this post.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P, MFM2P
http://mrorr-isageek.com/double-clothesline-solving-equations/

I like this 3Act task from @mathletepearce on parallel lines and transversals. It has a nice mix of real world (railings on a staircase), notice & wonder and hands on paper cutting.
Curriculum Tags: Gr 7, Gr8, MFM1P
https://tapintoteenminds.com/3act-math/railing-reconstruction/





Some very cool (and maybe gross) data from Five Thirty Eight. apparently it was gut science week and they have many articles on various gut related topics. Of course a fair bit of that is about poop. And if that is not a hook for students then I don't know what is.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MBF3C, MDM4U
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/gut-week-introduction/






Some more @desmos Friday Fives. Here are a couple of weeks worth. Some things on slope, domain and range, parabolas, some derivatives, extrapolating with the fastest mile, some intuitive lines of best fit and more (and I love the scatterplots Polygraph).
Curriculum Tags: All
http://blog.desmos.com/post/143605448140/friday-five-for-april-29
http://blog.desmos.com/post/143957961292/friday-five-for-may-6-2016
http://blog.desmos.com/post/144315807437/friday-five-for-may-13

I think I agree with most of what @matthewoldridge says in his unpublished letter to the editor here. The only thing I may contend with is the notion that $60 million is nothing to sneer at. I will sneer. In light of our featured post this week I would argue that $60 million isn't much money at all. In fact, it's not even new money. It's redirected money (so other programs are being short changed). And if you work it out, with about 1.5 million gr k-9 students (where the money is targeted) that works out to about $40 a kid or a fraction of a percent of each student's total funding.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://matthewoldridge.blogspot.ca/2016/05/letter-to-editor-of-major-national.html

Some history here. The story of zero. As it turns out we didn't always have zero to kick around. Here is an older radio piece on zero from @SLsingh too.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://vimeo.com/161757232

The Story of Zero - Getting Something from Nothing from The Royal Institution on Vimeo.

A left over post from OAME 2016. @wheeler_laura has been doing a lot of sketchnoting and I shared some two weeks ago, here she uploads all of her notes from OAME2016 and to go with the Ignite ones are a couple on a session on Assessment from @lkpacarynuk. I love talking about assessment so I was intrigued by what's on these two notes. I kinda wish I was in that session.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://mslwheeler.wordpress.com/2016/05/19/oame-sketchnotes/

I don't know much about Sumo wrestling but this set of data is impressive. It is hard to tell from the image below, but click on the link and see how interactive it is. And if that doesn't impress you, the shear fact that there are hundreds of years of data represented in this set, has to.
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/sumo/

A very cool example of rotational symmetry for any geometry class. Thanks to @mathletepearce for this one.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
https://media.giphy.com/media/xTk9ZA3bn9DOf9ODKw/giphy.gif

Students might be interested to know that, on average, actresses are younger than actors. A nice example of a distribution
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
http://www.curiousgnu.com/imdb-age-distribution

A nice little real application of systems of equations from @bkdidact with that classic of problems about ticket sales and trying to determine how many of each were sold via these two cheque purchases. 
Curriculum Tags: MPM2D, MFM2P


Friday, May 13, 2016

Math Links for Week Ending May 13th, 2016

The Data and Story Library (DASL) is an awesome repository of data sets that can be used to teach statistics. For a while it was offline and looking for a new home. It has found one thanks to @DataDesk7. Go to the site and search by statistical method (eg correlation) or subject (Eg health) for a bunch of text files with raw data in them ripe for the picking. I have used this as a source for problems many times. Here is my favourite data set.
Curriculum Tags: MBF3C, MAP4C, MDM4U
http://found-data.blogspot.ca/2016/05/the-data-and-story-library-dasl.html

I like unintended uses of Google Docs, and last year I shared @Joe_Sisco's Interacive Wordwalls using Google Drawings. In this post @ryan_psmith uses the same technique to create interactive algebra tile Google Drawings. Thanks to @wheeler_laura for pointing this one out
Curriculum Tags: MPM1D, MFM1P, MPM2P
http://rypsmith.blogspot.ca/2015/12/manipulatives-in-math.html


Here is a great example of conditional probability and why the problem of false positives can be hard to understand. Based on the math, it turns out that the probability of dying in a car crash is higher than an extinction level event happening to our planet. The math is correct but the thing that people forget about things like this is that there is one Earth and one "experiment" where as for car accidents there are thousands of experiments happening everyday.
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
http://fortune.com/2016/05/04/extinction-car-crash/

I like this short little activity from @mathycathy that mixes animals, linear patterns and Desmos. Students are given an image of three "critters" that change based on a linear growing pattern. Then students discuss what might happen next, graph the relationship then guess what the 100th term might look like. Nice and simple.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
https://teacher.desmos.com/activitybuilder/custom/572...78a97f

The connection of math that gambling has is often poo-pooed by educators (for fear of possibly starting an addiciton - I mean seriously, we have to call dice "number cubes"). In this post, @AlexBellos gives us reason to love gambling and why it has helped math.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MBF3C, MDM4U
https://www.theguardian.com/science/alexs-adventures-in-numberland/2016/may/05/seven-lucky-ways-that-gambling-changed-maths

I just found out about this blog from Michael Lieff. Here they look at data visualizations and point out unique representations, good uses of data and issues. Its been around for a couple of years but on the homepage there are some suggestions of popular posts to look at.
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
http://junkcharts.typepad.com/






A couple of more posts from last week's OAME conference (for more check out last week's post). I was sorry I missed all of @marybourassa's sessions but I guilted her into posting her slide decks (she had many). She did a neat panel discussion with (@alexoverwijk, @mrorr_geek, @sheriwalker72 and @BDMclaurin on the benefits of spiralling the curriculum, a session on her WODB site, an awesome session on her grade 10 applied & academic classes (her day by day posts on her blog are great) and finally ended up doing an Ignite session on asking 150,000 questions. Check her decks out here, there really is something for everyone here.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://marybourassa.blogspot.ca/2016/05/oame-2016.html

I mentioned one session from @paulynecass last week and found that also did one with @igniteincite on the Effective Use of Manipulatives. Looks like it was a session packed with stuff.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://bit.ly/JrIntManipulatives

Yup, so us Canadians luv our Census. So much that we shut down the website.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MBF3C, MDM4U, MAP4C
https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/census-so-lit?utm_term=.ydXzzAXapG#.gkOkkpQ25A

Sad but true, this professor gets pulled off of a plane because his mathematical scribbles were mistaken as an act of terrorism. He was wielding weapons of math abstraction.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/rampage/wp/2016/05/07/ivy-league-economist-interrogated-for-doing-math-on-american-airlines-flight/

If you need to introduce a friend to the Desmos Graphing calculator then send them to this recording of a intro webinar. Even if you know Desmos, you may find some things you like in the challenges that @mjfenton uses to demonstrate some of the features.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BpKOfq-H58




















I can't wait to see the movie The Man Who Knew Infinity and @standupmaths has some mathematical facts as a companion


Hopefully this isn't your math class
Curriculum Tags: All
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XECyt6u_rSY&sns


Finally a practical use of rates. Thanks to @mathletepearce for this one
Curriculum Tags: All
https://www.facebook.com/OntarioProud/photos/a.1693894720888631.1073741828.1693504040927699/1722597111351725/?type=3&theater

Who doesn't like "Fibonachos"?
Curriculum Tags: All
https://twitter.com/SciencePorn/status/729487441019715585
Finally a store that gets it. Thanks to Michael Lieff for this one
Curriculum Tags: All
https://www.facebook.com/MyMathElation/photos/a.615351755257567.1073741828.615338091925600/883568025102604/?type=3&theater

Very cool visualization of the effects of global warming
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U

A fun Venn diagram. Can you figure it out? Thanks to @joe_Sisco for this one
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8

Friday, May 6, 2016

Math Links for Week Ending May 6th, 2016

It's OAME time and for this weeks Math Links I am going to focus on what Ontario teachers said and did while there (I was only there until Friday though). Next week I will likely have more but this is all I have as of Friday night. If you have some that you know of, please let me know

My presentation this year was on using technology in Calculus class. Below is my presentation. It has five new activities that I created and a tonne of links for calculus. Check it out below. In the coming weeks I will post the activities separately.
Curriculum Tags: MCV4U
http://bit.ly/oame-petro

To start off, one of the new things I created was a web sketch to investigate rates of change using the classic sliding ladder problem.
Curriculum Tags: MCV4U
http://engaging-math.blogspot.ca/p/web-sketches.html

I saw some great sessions at OAME. The first one I saw on Thursday showed some great work with bots and coding from @atcave & @PaulyneCass. See below for my video of coding tessellations.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://bit.ly/RoboticsandMath

I was introduced to the Set game by @StephRogers42 and Richard Gallant when they spoke about their Pre gr9 program. Here are their slides
Curriculum Tags: All
http://www.setgame.com/set/puzzle

Some other sessions that I didn't see but got the slide decks for include @alexoverwijk and @bdmclaurin on creating a Thinking Classroom
Curriculum Tags: All
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/14V88EtU71-mskxizlrUzbRZe5PmlSMSTbizMGls-y20/edit#slide=id.p4



@MrOrr_Geek and @mathletepearce double teamed a session on Making Grade 9 Tasks Contextual. I was in the session next door and I heard them clapping and having a great time.
Curriculum Tags: MPM1D, MFM1P
https://tapintoteenminds.com/oame2016/



@matthewOldridge had a session packed with info on inquiring. Lots of stuff here for all grades. BTW, I love this problem with the Toonie with the middle cut out
Curriculum Tags: All
https://www.icloud.com/keynote/000i.....#Presentation_16

And here is the slide deck for his "What Math is " Ignite session
https://www.icloud.com/keynote/000lK....#Presentation_14




Trina Duguay and @joe_sisco presented on eLearning and math. Note that you have to make a copy of this presentation to see it.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://t.co/bY4FFK5Cne




@MrSurti did a similar session to what he did at NCTM on questioning in 3U & 4U math
Curriculum Tags: MCR3U, MHF4U, MCV4U
http://tinyurl.com/oame2016surti






@MrSoClassroom spent his session on talking about how to make students "Doers" of math
Curriculum Tags: All
http://bit.ly/bitnumtalks



@JaySpeijer did his on Desmos with some nods to other dynamic apps to help you choose your technology wisely.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://www.emaze.com/@ACZZWIFC/desmos-at-oame-2016



@HTheijmeijer and @TinaBalfe talked about their BYOD/Flipped Classroom journey in their TLLP based session that spans from grade 9 to 12
Curriculum Tags: All
https://goo.gl/Hi2qZm

I programmed the Dash robot to do a rectangular tessellation.
Curriculum Tags: All

In his talk @stevenstrogatz mentioned the construction to determine the area of a circle and @mathvineaday posted this
Curriculum Tags: Gr8
https://twitter.com/mathvineaday/status/728593380729602048

I started off the week with a great session from @DrCathyBruce and Zachary Hawes talking about the importance of spatial reasoning. We saw the research and then got to look at the brand new book they co authored Taking Shape. See the links for other tweets on key points.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://twitter.com/davidpetro314/status/727911051577065472
https://twitter.com/davidpetro314/status/727912094528462848
https://twitter.com/davidpetro314/status/727923539915898880
https://twitter.com/davidpetro314/status/727935546589204480
https://twitter.com/davidpetro314/status/727940560309264385

I loved seeing @stevenstrogatz speak. This was my take away (since I had already known about his Joy of X NY Times columns)
Curriculum Tags: All
So True
Curriculum Tags: All
https://twitter.com/MarkChubb3/status/728565835808133120/photo/1
I love these Doodles that @Wheeler_Laura does. I don't know how she can get so much on them in such a short time. I only got to see the 2nd Ignite session but so glad she summarized both
Curriculum Tags: All

I loved @Gfletchy's slide in his Ingite that reminded us that silence is OK (but hard to accept). That is, wait, let kids think after a question is posed.
Curriculum Tags: All
As of right now, this seems to be my most popular OAME Tweet from a session with @StephRogers42 and Richard Gallant