Math Links for Week Ending October 10th, 2014

We are trying to add at least one new activity per week to our blog Engaging Math. This week we have added our Data Management Scavenger Hunt. In this activity students are given a set of data (with no titles) and asked to find their matching graph and title. It was actually developed for grade 8 but could be useful in any course with data management
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MBF3C, MAP4C, MDM4U
http://engaging-math.blogspot.ca/2014/10/data-management-scavenger-hunt.html

This is not a math resource exactly and I haven't tried it out but I am super intrigued. If you would like a set of clickers in your classroom but can't afford anything but some paper print outs (and you have a smart phone) then this might be the app for you. The app is called Plickers and I heard about it first here at I Speak Math. Apparently the way it works is you print out cards for your students and when you ask the questions they hold up their cards. You then scan the room with your phone camera and it reads the room and gives you the data. I will definitely be giving this a try next week.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://ispeakmath.org/2014/10/04/plickers-aka-can-we-do-this-all-period/

My son is in grade 10 and just finished working on this unit and I found myself asking the same question as Mary at the Making Math Meaningful blog. What is up with the circle? That is why go to all the trouble of developing the circle formula and not even worry about when the centre is not at (0,0). None the less I like this simple introduction to the circle that uses a review of the length of the line segment and Desmos.
Curriculum Tags: MPM2D
http://marybourassa.blogspot.ca/2014/09/equations-of-circles.html

I saw this commercial and wondered if they stole it from the math Twitterverse. The first time I saw this was on this video and then Dan Meyer made it into a 3Acts Task. And now it's in a Prudential commercial. Great stuff if you are teaching the idea of exponentials.
Curriculum Tags: MCR3U, MHF4U, MAP4C, MCT4C
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZpjmBGIp44

I was reminded of this clip earlier this week. Sometimes in math all that is necessary is finding the right motivation. This clip from the TV show The Wire takes that to an extreme but the lesson still stands. If you contextualize math for students, they will be more likely to "get it". Note that there is some serious swearing in this clip so it is definitely NSFW.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTsyFY9TESo

TED-ED had compiled all of their math related videos on one page. Try not to spend too much time on hear at once. I think my favourite might be the OK Cupid one. Thanks to @stevenstrogatz for this one.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://ed.ted.com/series/math-in-real-life

This is a classic and now available as an animated gif/jpg.
Curriculum Tags: Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P
http://cdn.diply.com/img/ff321f2c-b405-45a2-a987-dd747736de37.jpg

Math Links for Week Ending Aug. 1st, 2014

Well this is the third year in a row that I missed Twitter Math Camp. If you don't know what it is then click here. But by all accounts it was awesome. You can see the Tweets with the hashtag #tmc14 here. Unfortunately for me it is even further away next year as it is in California.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://www.twittermathcamp.com/

And speaking of TMC, @MaryBourassa gave me this great suggestion. Desmos has a new activity and as the kids say "it's Sick". The premiss is simple. you are creating parking spaces by painting lines. You have a given number of spots to create in a given amount of space keeping in mind that the actual line dividers for the spaces take up space as well. It may sound kinda lame but it is really well structured. It starts with estimation then moves to something more exact and then finally moves to generating an expression to represent the solution in the general case. It's all done in very dynamic nature that starts very visual and simple and works towards algebraic and more complex. The other part that I like is at the end of each section they ask a question and expect a written response. This is done in a neat way where they show some recent responses (not necessarily all correct) so the student has somewhere to start.

This would be a great way to show students the power of equations, variables and modelling in a way that takes them from real to abstract. This is part of a series of activities that Desmos has developed here where you can create a class online to do them with your own students. Anyway, give this parking activity a shot at the following link (click on the Walk through Central Park link)
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MFM1P, MPM1D
https://teacher.desmos.com/centralpark#

Asking students questions that will invoke thinking is sometimes tough. So it's always good when someone else does the heavy lifting for you. Here is a blog post that has all kinds of questions on topics like series, sequence, probability, statistics, functions, quadratics, polynomials, rationals, exponentials, logs and modelling. There is probably something here for just about ever math course. I think this also came out of the TMC14. Take a look
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P, MPM2D, MFM2P, MCR3U, MCF3M, MBF3C, MAP4C, MDM4U, MCT4C, MHF4U
http://function-of-time.blogspot.ca/2014/07/essential-questions-for-algebra-2.html

I have seen versions of this in various places but it is worth mentioning it when ever it shows up. Graphing using humans on a grid you put on the floor is a nice kinaesthetic activity. Here is an outline of how to do it.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P
http://wncpactivemath.wordpress.com/2013/06/20/human-coordinate-geometry/

I first heard about row games a few years ago from the F(t) blog. I have some that I have helped produce that I will be posting soon but here are some more that have already been created. I like these for two reasons. One, students work in pairs to complete a series of problems and two, they don't work on the same problems but instead work on their own column of problems but the answers for each question in each row match so that students can self check if they have the answer correct. That is, if they get the same answer as their partner in the same row then that means they both must have got it right. If they aren't the same answer then that means that one or both of them is wrong and they both have to work to see why.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P, MPM2D, MFM2P
https://app.box.com/rowgames/1/35624412/1292989622/1

I like how @thescamdog has summarized all of these assessment strategies. Pick the ones you like and go to town.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hjvn00kq2nxrgwv/60%20Formative%20Assessment%20Strategies.docx

Here is a great video from Numberphile on log tables. I like it because it gives a nice little primer on how calculations used to be done using the log tables. This would be good when teaching logarithms as it gives a nice application (though out dated) of the power of logs.
Curriculum Tags: MHF4U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRzH4xB0GdM

This is the extension to the above video
Curriculum Tags: MHF4U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzV50goW_WM

I have said more than once that I love stuff about randomness. And if you ever teach anything about probability then you should too. Here are a couple of related videos, the first from Vsauce talks about what random is.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MBF3C, MDM4U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rIy0xY99a0

The second video is from Varitasium and is about what is not random. Some things here you might find surprising.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MBF3C, MDM4U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMb00lz-IfE

Not sure if everyone needs this but here is a nice visualization that shows how many pairs of underwear you should pack on a trip.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MDM4U
https://medium.com/@sofauxboho/pack-like-a-nerd-2157aa39738f

A nice park that encourages math by incorporating mathematical concepts in the design
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
https://twitter.com/hyper_linda/status/491561082130276352/photo/1

Math Links for Week Ending June 13th, 2014

Speed dating and Row games are two really nice activities to promote kids doing questions and then self checking whether they are correct or not. I first learned about these from @k8nowak on her Function of Time blog a few years ago. I was recently reminded of them when @thescamdog tweeted that they have a little video introduction to these on their provincial math site in Alberta. Speed dating has students become experts in the solution for one question each. They are then paired sitting across from each other and switch question. Once that question is solved then they shift one position and switch with another student. Row games has students paired with a worksheet where there are two columns of questions and each student does the question in one column. The beauty of the worksheet is that the answer for each question in any particular row is the same so that if the students get different answers they know that one or both of them has made a mistake. Thus it's self checking.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://www.aac.ab.ca/projects-grants/high-school-mathematics/#FormativeAssessmentRowGamesandSpeedDatingvideo-6

How about some data on the lyrics that boy bands of the 90's used the most. Yep, there's data on that. Hey, data is data. This could easily be used for central tendancy, bar graphs, or even box plots.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MBF3C, MDM4U
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/90s-boy-band-lyrics-theyre-all-about-you/

I like collecting real data in classes, and so I was thrilled with a reason to do so. That is, the mystery of why there are different weights of regular M&Ms vs Peanut Butter M&Ms per bag. The actual reason is a bit of a mystery and you can listen about that mystery with the Planet Money podcast here . But collecting data about how many M&Ms are in each pack (or how much each pack weighs in reality) is a good way to talk about measures of central tendency, dot plots, and standard deviation.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MBF3C, MDM4U
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/06/05/319084976/why-a-pack-of-peanut-butter-m-ms-weighs-a-tiny-bit-less-than-a-regular-pack

Though this is a couple of years old, I just came across it today. Math Goes to the Movies is a book that connects scenes in movies to teaching specific math concepts. Having done presentations on this sort of thing at OAME, I am interested to see what they have found that I haven't
Curriculum Tags:All
https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/content/math-goes-movies

Math anxiety is real. We have all seen kids who suffer from it. Here are some ways to combat this problem.

Curriculum Tags: All

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/06/how-to-fight-your-kids-math-anxiety/372572/

Mixing dance and math to entice girls in an after school program.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/science/2014/04/18/after-school-program-uses-dance-nurture-girls-interest-math/JmszMn1zOR7DPcRiozShpN/story.html

One of Keith Devlin's more recent books was Leonardo & Steve about, you guessed it, Fibonacci and Jobs. It comes in ebook only form but if you want to get the gyst of what's in the book you might look at this two part talk on the same subject.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://vimeo.com/93390473
http://vimeo.com/93532834

I like this math "takedown" of this motivational poster. It leads to a nice problem about comparing the volume of cylinders, spheres and cubes. Could be used in grade 9 math measurement or in grade 8 if you leave out the sphere.
Curriculum Tags: MPM1D, MFM1P, Gr8
https://twitter.com/dandersod/status/477024981042626560

Might as well have a graph about the World Cup. This is coming from the 538 blog where they predict the winner of the soccer tournament. And as they point out, you don't need a computer model to predict that Brazil is the heavy favourite (even after their controversial win over Croatia). Either way they go through the reasoning behind their prediciton
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MBF3C, MDM4U
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/its-brazils-world-cup-to-lose/

538 keeps hitting with the data that has so much bearing on world events. Which is the blingiest NBA playoff matchup? That is which pair of teams has the most rings.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MBF3C, MDM4U
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/its-the-second-blingiest-finals-matchup-in-modern-nba-history/

Math Links for Week Ending May 30th, 2014

 I really like this little intro activity for circumference from Andrew Stadel. I think any time that you can pull at students misconceptions then its a good thing. In this case its the disconnect between the size of the diameter and the size of the circumference. The vehicle is a bet about how high a glass is compared to how round. In my own class I would probably do this live and have several glasses and cylinders to have students eventually discover that the circumference is a little more than 3 times the diameter.
Curriculum Tags: Gr8
http://mr-stadel.blogspot.ca/2014/05/going-round-in-circles.html

Here is a neat idea for making tedious calculations a bit more palatable. Play the Would You Rather game. Give them a scenario and then have them choose based on two choices within that scenario. Thanks to Dan Meyer for this one.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://mrjonesmath.wordpress.com/2014/05/01/day-2-of-state-testing/






Fawn Nguyen has done a great job of summarizing the data from the McDonalds Monopoly game. She includes the spreadsheet for analysis all the prizes. For the younger grades (7&8) you can just concentrate on the odds and some anecdotal stuff but for grade 12 students you can extend to expected value. One of the things that I like that she did was tried to compare the prize purse for Canada and the US and found that indeed they are somewhat proportional.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MBF3C, MDM4U
http://fawnnguyen.com/2014/05/04/mcdonalds-monopoly-game.aspx

Now some may poo poo having kids use stickers to indicate how they are doing but when ever you can get kids to self assess then you are actually helping them move forward cognitively. So having kids indicate how they thought they did on an assessment is a step in that direction. We have had success in doing this with learning goals but here Check out how Julie has done that in her class here.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://ispeakmath.org/2014/05/21/stickers-for-self-assessment/




And one more from Julie at I Speak Math. In grade 8 we have to teach Pythagorean theorem but in a way that students are to discover the geometric property. If you have snap cubes then that is an easy way to do this.
Curriculum Tags: Gr8
http://ispeakmath.org/2014/05/15/discovering-the-pythagorean-theorem-with-cm-cubes/





I really like sorting activities. And this one is from the Shell Centre was pointed out by Mary at the M^3 blog. It's about sorting different representations of simple polynomial functions (including factored and non factored forms). She spread out the images and text over two posts and I like how she showed some student work that had mistakes in it. You can get the templates of the handouts here.
Curriculum Tags: MPM1D, MFM2P
http://marybourassa.blogspot.ca/2014/05/day-68.html
http://marybourassa.blogspot.ca/2014/05/day-69.html



For the stat heads out there (and those who love baseball), Wolfram Alpha has now entered piles of baseball stats into their database. Check them out here
Curriculum Tags: MBF3C, MDM4U
http://blog.wolframalpha.com/2014/05/05/going-going-gone-and-into-wolframalphas-baseball-data-collection/

I don't agree but it is still funny. Thanks to Timon Piccini for this one
Curriculum Tags: All

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 Apr 19th, 2013

I have been an XKCD fan for years and just found out that the creator has a new blog called What If? (Thanks to Michele Cooper for pointing this out) The premiss of the new blog is to
try to answer weird questions about physics. Some fantasy (How much force could Yoda output?) some based in some sort of reality (What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball travelling at 90% the speed of light?). But some are math based. He apparently puts a new one out every Tuesday. Here are the ones that I think are math based:
SAT Guessing -What if everyone guessed on the SATs. How many perfect scores would there be?
Droppings - If you went outside and lay down on your back with your mouth open, how long would you have to wait until a bird pooped in it?
Pennies - If you carried around a penny in your coin tray, how long would it take for that penny to cost you more than a cent in extra gas?
Twitter - How many unique English tweets are possible?
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U

Sometimes technology can be a problem. Especially when it lets you do calculations that are difficult to check. Here is a story about a widely used economics study that eventually was found to have a flaw in the Excel spreadsheet calculations. Could be a good conversation starter about calculating average. It comes from the NPR radio show Marketplace.
http://www.marketplace.org/topics/economy/excel-mistake-heard-round-world
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MDM4U

Here are a couple of pythagorean proofs that you could use to challenge some of your better kids
http://www.cut-the-knot.org/pythagoras/index.shtml#99
http://www.cut-the-knot.org/pythagoras/index.shtml
Curriculum Tags: Gr8, MPM1D



I kind of like this blog post about functions. Its a relatively simple intro to functions but I like the differer real life examples of functions machines.
http://rationalexpressions.blogspot.ca/2013/03/is-this-function.html
Curriculum Tags: MCF3M, MCR3U





For baseball fans, we know there are a pile of stats that can be used in class out there. Here are some
from Albert Pujols that could be used for linear relations and extrapolation in grade 9
http://www.yummymath.com/2013/albert-pujols-on-pace-2013/
Curriculum Tags: MPM1D, MFM1P




I like the idea of this activity for dealing with surface area of irregular shapes. A prank where you cover an entire room with tin foil. How much would you need?
http://www.yummymath.com/2013/foil-prank/
Curriculum Tags: MPM1D, MFM1P




Web2.0calc is an online scientific calculator that you can embed in your own websites and blogs. Download the widgets here (there are three versions)
Web 2.0 scientific calculator
Curriculum Tags: All

Here is a good activity where students are given choice in dealing with exponentials (in context).
Although it is not always flawless, giving students choices of contexts is a way to help foster some sort of engagement.
http://drawingonmath.blogspot.ca/2013/04/exponentials-in-context.html
Curriculum Tags: MCF3M, MCR3U, MAP4C, MCT4C

Any time there is some talk of using good embedded formative assessment in math class is a good time as well as I am concerned. With references to Dylan Wiliam, this is a good place to start.
http://thescamdog.wordpress.com/2013/04/14/two-by-four/
Curriculum Tags: All

In an Ignite talk, the speaker gives a 5 minute talk with a 20 page slideshow. They are meant to be really inspiring. Here is a link to a playlist with 64 of these talks.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5CDF98F961F9527D
And below is one of my favourites about Wondering and Noticing
Curriculum Tags: All

The first time I saw this animation was in the documentary Supersize Me. Its a great movie for any data management class to see. There are a lot of great displays of data in unique ways and it tells a good story.
Obesity Graph
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U