Math Links for Week Ending Mar. 21st, 2014

I have been teaching solving systems of equations for many years and I have found it to be really nice and challenging and rich for academic students. But for applied students it can be meaningless and very abstract. Here is the expectation from grade 10 applied: solve systems of two linear equations involving two variables with integral coefficients, using the algebraic method of substitution or elimination (Sample problem: Solve y = 2x + 1, 3x + 2y = 16 for x and y algebraically, and verify algebraically and graphically.) Do you see what I mean? Too abstract for applied students. Even within a context, the method of elimination or substitution is still abstract. However, if you can find a way to take away that abstraction of the solving process (at least for a minute) then you might actually get them to eventually buy into those methods. That being said I love this post from the Making Math Meaningful blog giving a problem that is manageable for applied students and then giving them manipulatives to create the solution. Take a look at the solution seen here to the problem "If 4 jujubes and 6 smarties costs 24 cents and 2 jujubes and 5 smarties cost 16 cents, then how much does 1 jujube costs and how much does 1 smartie cost? "
Curriculum Tags: MPM2D, MFM2P
http://marybourassa.blogspot.ca/2014/03/mfm2p-day-23.html

When not creating his own from scratch Kyle at the Tap Into Teen Minds blog is adapting found resources and turning them into 3Act Tasks. Some new ones include a probability task for MDM4U and a linear relations task for grade 9. And the other thing he does is matches them up to Ontario curriculum (by course and expectation), even Dan Meyer's. And then he does another solid and makes them searchable by grade, expectation and author. 
Curriculum Tags: MFM1P, MPM1D, MDM4U
http://tapintoteenminds.com/3act-math/darius-washington-free-throws-win/
http://tapintoteenminds.com/3act-math/crazy-taxi/


And why not some more basketball math. Warren Buffet has put up a Billion dollars for anyone who can pick every game in every bracket in this year's college basketball tourny. Scientific American has done the math on this and apparently only each American needs to enter 425 trials for someone to be likely to win. Here it is
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/2014/03/17/we-only-need-to-fill-out-425-brackets-each-to-win-buffets-billion/




Hey do you need some data on the frequency of rhyming words in pop songs? And as an extra bonus, it's dynamic. Click on the desired pair of rhyming words in the graph and the graph changes to give the historical frequency in pop music.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MBF3C, MDM4U, MAP4C
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2014/02/justin_bieber_and_the_beatles_they_both_liked_to_rhyme_the_same_words.html

OK, so this I love. Its one of my favourite MDM4U problems. the ones that deal with false positives and their meaning. Take this example of a test for Alzheimer's that is supposed to be 90% accurate. However, when you actually do the math and incorporate that accuracy on two groups of people (those with and those without Alzheimer's) you actually see that the test isn't that accurate at all due to all the false positives. Check out the math and the nice visuals here. 
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
http://ampp3d.mirror.co.uk/2014/03/11/how-a-90-accurate-alzheimers-test-can-be-wrong-92-of-the-time/

It seems that there still needs to be some work done in this area. Both genders think women are bad at math! That is not good. Read about it here.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://news.sciencemag.org/math/2014/03/both-genders-think-women-are-bad-basic-math

And to make things worse now it seems that genetics might predispose people to math anxiety. This doesn't bode well for the growth mind set. Read about it here.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140317095843.htm

Do you need some examples of scatter plots of real data? These aren't so good for line of best fit but they are pretty good for talking about the meaning of where points are on the graph. These graphs are about the connection between life expectancy and income. Go to the website for the details.
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/03/15/business/higher-income-longer-lives.html

And finally this week, some mathematical poetry about parallel lines.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://twitter.com/SciencePorn/status/441748070133272577/photo/1

Math Links for Week Ending Oct. 25th, 2013

Who said that math couldn't be emotional? Watch this father react after his son brings home a C mark.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ls9Cg8iaq1s

I really like this post about giving a real reason to use ratios. Check it out: "Give them a recipe that involves two quantities, such as lemons and cups of sugar and ask them how to make more lemonade that tastes the same and less lemonade that tastes the same. Have them record different values in a labeled table.". See more examples of this train of thought. Thanks to Dan Meyer for this one.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1D
http://nicoraplaca.com/one-way-introduce-ratios-make-sense-students/

Try out the Desmos Des-Man project. Have your kids flex their Domain and Range muscle by drawing pictures of faces with functions
Curriculum Tags: MCR3U, MCF3M
http://blog.desmos.com/post/62158789621/des-man-a-desmos-labs-project

The candle is burning at one end at Tap into Teen Minds with another three act math task. Extrapolation, interpolation in scatterplots here. Complete with videos and data.
Curriculum Tags: MFM1P, MPM1D, MDM4U, MAP4C
http://tapintoteenminds.com/2013/10/14/candles-burning-3-act-math-task/

Interesting article about research that suggests why there are fewer women in mathematics than there should be. This XKCD comic kinda sums it up. Thanks to Mark Esping for this one.

Curriculum Tags: All
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/2013/10/21/the-need-for-belonging-in-math-and-science/

Can you use early math skills to predict skills later in life? There is research to suggest this is true about learning things like fractions but is it true for numeracy skills in babies?
Curriculum Tags: All
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/10/babies-born-with-math-skills/

Last week I posted a video from the TV show Person of Interest and @ChrisHunter36 helped me find a better version and then I found that he had posted more here
Curriculum Tags: All
http://reflectionsinthewhy.wordpress.com/2013/01/28/teacher-of-interest-episode-1/
http://vimeo.com/58436004

Oh, legos
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
http://xkcd.com/1281/

Thanks to Edudemic for pointing this one out.
Curriculum Tags: MCR3U, MCF3M, MHF4U
http://www.edudemic.com/best-math-chart/ 

Math Links for Week Ending May 17th, 2013

MATH CAMP 2013 has been announced for this year. Though I think the format has changed. For one its not called MATH CAMPPP anymore. This year the focus is on creation of better facilitators. Let me back track a bit first. Math Camp is for K-12 teachers of mathematics. They come together for 5 days of intense immersion into a chosen mathematics topic and leave totally drained having had an intense but rewarding experience and bringing with them tonnes of resources ready to go for the classroom (here are the past years of resources). Usually there is a curriculum theme for each year. However, this year the theme seems to be revolving around facilitators. So if you give PD (or want to give PD) in mathematics in Ontario then this all expense paid activity is for you. Here is the sign up form. Space is very limited so sign up early to ensure a spot.
Curriculum Tags: All

I really like this video. Sure its one of those list videos but when you are doing a unit that involves measurement conversion then I think it would be interesting for kids to know that their are some pretty odd units out there. Who knew that a pinch was an actual measurement.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8qQolqkTU0
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MFM2P

Last week I posted a video of Dan Meyer talking about how to use his 3Act math tasks. That was Act 1. This week Dan has posted videos for Act 2 and Act 3. All great resources for implementing these great activities in your classes.
http://blog.mrmeyer.com/?p=17006
http://blog.mrmeyer.com/?p=17024
Curriculum Tags: All

In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, Math For Grown Ups has a nice post a
bout how the FBI uses math to profile suspects in acts of this nature. There is not a lot of specific info here but it is good to remind kids that math is important in a lot of ways that may not be obvious
http://www.mathforgrownups.com/boston-marathon-how-fbi-profilers-use-math/
Curriculum Tags: All

I like this review of online videos on confidence intervals. These are actually pretty hard to explain (). But here are some examples of good (a few) and bad (a lot) of these vids. The one below is my favourite
http://learnandteachstatistics.wordpress.com/2013/04/15/youtubevideos/
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U

You can't vote anymore but you can see who the winners were in this contest for students to come up with the best video about mathematics. There is some good stuff here. I think just about any school could do the same sort of thing within their building and it would be a good way to promote mathematics in a fun and engaging way. Below is the winner but you can see them all here:

http://www.math-o-vision.com/

Curriculum Tags: All

Belated but still always good with the graphs. I think seeing these types of videos is good for elementary students to inspire them to create interesting graphs when doing their data management units.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKAFS_L9o9I
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8

Math Links for Week Ending May 10th, 2013

Right out of the gate, a great post from Dan Meyer. He has been showering us with 3Act Tasks for years now but now some more detailed info on how to actually execute them in class. Read the entire blog post here (including all the great comments, particularly Kate's about what might happen when you try to do one of these):
http://blog.mrmeyer.com/?p=16470
Curriculum Tags: All

I really liked this "real world" task dealing with speeding tickets given by the police but measured by pilots in the air using hash marks on the roads. I remember as a kid, my dad getting one of these on the 401.
http://MrHonner.com/2013/04/09/calculus-gave-me-a-speeding-ticket/
Curriculum Tags: MCV4U




The first of two posts from the Square Root of Negative One on Trig. Both are activities. This first one is a hand related way to remember trig ratios of special angles. One thing I like about this post (besides the insights) are the links to others that have posted about this so that you can get many perspectives.
http://squarerootofnegativeoneteachmath.blogspot.ca/2013/05/trig-hand.html
Curriculum Tags: MCR3U, MCF3M, MHF4U



The second is a series of flash card activities that deal with trig ratios and various angles. I like this because with a single set of cards, she has come up with sev
eral ideas of how to implement them in the class (even giving insight as to what might go wrong).
http://squarerootofnegativeoneteachmath.blogspot.ca/practice.html
Curriculum Tags: MCR3U, MCF3M, MHF4U



Hey? You want some math comics, how about this site that is chock full of them: Weapons of Math Destruction. If there was social commentary of math and education of math, this might be it.
http://www.weaponsofmathdestruction.com/thumbnails.cfm
Curriculum Tags: All

I really liked this article from a math teacher about what its like to have math anxiety. I think that a problem that many of has as math teachers is that most of us probably did well in math and thus have no empathy for someone who struggles. And by not having that perspective we might actually dismiss any issues that kids have as trivial. But read this article and particularly, I like the bullets at the end of the typical kid who can't do math.
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/04/math_teacher_explains_math_anxiety_and_defensiveness_it_hurts_to_feel_stupid.html
Curriculum Tags: All

We will round out this week with a neat animation created using oscillating sine waves. Nice application of trig functions
Curriculum Tags: MCR3U, MCF3M, MHF4U
http://gizmodo.com/this-animation-based-on-oscillating-sine-waves-is-utter-493970700

OSCILLATE from Daniel Sierra on Vimeo.

Math Links for Week Ending Mar 22nd, 2013

Was in a session with John Scammell today and was reminded of this great starter for a problem. The largest gummy bear. So here is a blog post that has links to a few different people that have used this (including John). http://musingmathematically.blogspot.ca/2012/08/gummy-bear-revisited.html

Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MFM1P, MPM1D, MFM2P, MPM2D

Nice beginning of a 3Acts from Dan Meyer (who else?) This one is about discounts and the premiss is about what kind of discount would you choose. The nice thing is the links to the similar and real coupons that ask similar questions (from 101qs.com)
http://blog.mrmeyer.com/?p=16525
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8

What a great project Advanced Functions. Why not make families of functions into an art project. I love the way this teacher displays them for the entire school to see like an art opening. Awesome
http://samjshah.com/2013/03/12/families-of-curves-3/#
Curriculum Tags: MHF4U

I like this post from I Speak Math about doing homework. I struggle with the idea of giving homework. Yes it is important for kids to practice but our weakest kids often don't do the homework because they either don't think they can and aren't willing to try or when they do try they get frustrated and quit easily. I don't know that there is any one strategy that always works but anything is worth a try. From the blog: "The homework is always easier than the work we do in class.  I do not want them to struggle at home where I can’t help them.  I just want to reaffirm the main ideas in class."
http://ispeakmath.wordpress.com/2013/03/17/i-just-cant-grade-homework/
Curriculum Tags: All

Want to calculate Pi without all that pesky business of circles and stuff? Have all kinds of toothpicks and don't know what to do with them. Why not use them to calculate Pi using the Buffon's needle experiment. A great way to show how probability is connected to Pi
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cocktail-party-physics/2013/03/14/
Curriculum Tags: Gr8, MDM4U

Here is a nice activity for calculus about related rates. Well laid out and includes some introspective stuff about why to do related rates.
http://samjshah.com/2013/02/12/related-rates-yet-another-redux/
Curriculum Tags: MCV4U

Here's a fun little activity dealing with properties of quadrilaterals. It is to use the idea of an Instagram profile that kids have to make for different quadrilaterals. Its an activity that doesn't have to be specific to any quadrilateral but could be used for any thing that has characteristics that could be described.
http://drawingonmath.blogspot.ca/2013/03/instagram-for-quadrilaterals.html
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8





Taboo is a game where you are given a word that you have to describe for your friends to guess. The catch is that you are given four other words that you cannot use while describing your mystery word. Why not create some cards to do the same thing in math. This teacher did and has her students actually create the word sets.
http://fawnnguyen.com/2013/03/08/math-taboo-game.aspx
Curriculum Tags: All