Math Links for Week Ending Dec. 23rd, 2016

I love Christmas time. That means all kinds of geometric packaging. And candy companies, I think, are the best. Of course Toblerone's normal packaging is a triangular prism but in past years they have branched out for Christmas (here and here) but this year, maybe it's Lindore with their parallelepiped.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P
https://twitter.com/davidpetro314/status/812322333444730880

Everything you wanted to know about multiplication. From the standard model to multiplication of binomials @mathletepearce will take you on a journey giving you a lot of visuals along the way.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://tapintoteenminds.com/progression-of-multiplication/


It seems like multiplication is the topic at hand. Now from @mburnsmath. I really love the story she tells about he student who knows 6x8 from memory but can't figure out 6x9 because he "hasn't learned it yet". She then goes on to explain a version of multiplication Bingo that goes way beyond just memorizing the multiplication table. I have been doing a lot with teachers who are looking for ways to close the gaps with their intermediate students. This is a great way to do it.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://marilynburnsmathblog.com/wordpress/multiplication-bingo/


I like this story about how researchers were using Twitter to predict outbreaks of the Norovirus. Essentially they searched terms like "sick", "vomit" etc and then correlated that with actual medical records and found that they could use these Twitter searches to predict when the next outbreak came with about an 80% accuracy rate. They controlled for things like location and if people were just talking about having a hangover. It would be a nice thing to bring up when talking about how correlation could be used to make predictions. There are several stories about stats here but this one starts at about 5:50
Curriculum Tags: MPM1D, MFM1P, MDM4U, MAP4C
http://bbc.in/2fBo3US

Do you know what a big number is? Can you understand the difference between a billion and a trillion? If we want our students to be numerate then we should make sure we are. That's what I thought of when I saw the beginning of @MarkChubb3's post. He asked teachers to place 1 billion on this number line. I am pretty sure that most people would get this wrong but math teachers? Yup. Take a look at some other ways you can deal with big numbers in his post.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://buildingmathematicians.wordpress.com/2016/12/17/how-big-is-big/

All the talk three years ago was about the results of the 2012 PISA test. The 2015 test was written last year and the results are in. Although this article was written with the US in mind, here in Canada we are still doing pretty good. Thanks to @KMarkPet for this one.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2016/12/18/what-can-we-learn-from-countries-that-effectively-teach-math/

A very cool connection to the value of e and connection to it's definition via limits
Curriculum Tags: MHF4U, MCV4U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgBGibfLD-U

and even more about e here
Curriculum Tags: MHF4U, MCV4U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuA2EAgAegE

We can find the math in anything. How about the parabolic nature of the song The 12 Days of Christmas.
Curriculum Tags: MPM2D, MFM2P, MCR3U, MCF3M, MBF3C
https://twitter.com/DataIsBeautiful/status/810572151464095744

12 Days of Christmas Gifts [OC] https://t.co/6lqGMtOKhu #dataviz pic.twitter.com/L02ebg2DkO

— /r/DataIsBeautiful (@DataIsBeautiful) December 18, 2016

I have a t-shirt that is my "ugly Christmas" shirt that uses logarithms to create a Christmas message. But as it turns out not everyone who makes t-shirts doesn't know their math. Check out my shirt and this "math fail" version (bottom). I will leave out the link to where to buy this monstrosity.
Curriculum Tags: MHF4U