I never fail to point out when teachers create and share their stuff, especially when it is clear that it has taken a bit of time or take some skill. For many, creating Explain Everything files can be a chore but when you have people like @MrOrr_Geek, those who might not have the time to create these have a friend in him. In this case, its some resources on some review materials for percent for grade 11 MEL students. There are a couple of files (both dealing with percent). One is a nice re introduction to the notion of percents called Percent Pile Up and the other is a practice file called Random Winner. Of course even though he used it for grade 11 as a review, it would be appropriate all the way down to grade 7.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P, MAT1L, MAT2L, MEL3E, MEL4E http://mrorr-isageek.com/percent-pile-up-mel3e-day-5/ http://mrorr-isageek.com/random-winner-game-mel3e-day-6/
One of the nice things about this list that @MathyCathy is sharing of Desmos activities is that it kind of does a better job of the current Desmos search engine. Her list of some of her favourite activities including this nice integer card sort is great. Add the fact that there is a nice rubric for students creating Explain Everything recordings and you've got a nice set of resources here.
Curriculum Tags: All http://www.mathycathy.com/blog/2016/09/classroom-twitter-hodge-podge/
There is a lot of talk in the educational community about Math Talks. A lot of time we hear about this stuff for elementary but this post from @dsladkey does a great job in telling us how to apply this concept to secondary school. So look at this post for ideas for 10 days of Number Talks for Secondary.
Curriculum Tags: All http://teachhighschoolmath.blogspot.ca/2016/08/10-days-of-number-talks-for-high.html
I was reminded of this earlier this week but it never gets old. The classic "Verizon Math Fail"
As an amateur Ironman triathlete I am always keen on info about the sport. But I am also keen on a clean data set that you can download and analyze.. Especially one I can download and analyze. So here are the prize winnings so far over 800 professional triathletes from this year. Some good single variable analysis could be done with this data (dot plots, outliers, average, median etc). It's cool to see that #14 is a guy from the town I live (one of the 3000 of us) and it is also cool to see how few of them could actually make a living from their winnings.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MBF3C, MDM4U http://trstriathlon.com/pro-triathlon-money-list/
I thought this was pretty fun. Not sure where you would fit it into the math curriculum but it's still kinda neat. The idea is that there is a way to fold a piece of paper such that you can cut it once and end up with just about any shape. For example, in the video she ends up creating a way to fold paper and cut out each letter of the alphabet with one cut each
Curriculum Tags: All https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZREp1mAPKTM
In these times of more awareness of mental illness comes a story of one mathematician's battle with depression from the @story_collider
Curriculum Tags: All http://storycollider.org/podcast/2015-09-25
The static picture doesn't do this justice. Click on the link for the looping animated Gif
Curriculum Tags: All
Last year Mary at the Making Math Meaningful blog gave us a day by day glimpse of how she spiralled through the curriculum in her grade 10 applied class. This year she starts of giving her starter for her entire semester of classes. All 5 days for each of the 18 weeks. Check out the download on her site. Thanks Mary
Curriculum Tags: MFM2P http://marybourassa.blogspot.ca/2015/01/warm-ups.html
Andrew Stadel has maintained the Estimation 180 site to entertain a great discussion on what is essentially the idea of being numerate. Now he expands to a Twitter feed: @Estimation180. So a tweet a day to satisfy his daily estimation fix. Thanks to Mary Bourrassa for this one.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MAT1L, MPM1D, MFM1P, MAT2L, MPM2D, MFM2P, MEL3E, MEL4E http://mr-stadel.blogspot.ca/2015/01/estimation180-tweets.html
I really like these visualizations of the effectiveness of various medications. They really connect the idea of how visualizations can make a concept much more clear. For example, many people will tell you that someone who is at risk of a heart attack should take aspirin. But the data shows that if two thousand people did this, only one would avoid having a heart attack. Take a look for the dynamic versions on the site below.
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/27/upshot/can-this-treatment-help-me-theres-a-statistic-for-that.html
In measurement, precision and accuracy are often use synonymously but they are different. It is probably worth talking about this when doing anything to do with measurement. One of the more interesting bits is how some electronic conversion devices deal with ounces and grams.
Curriculum Tags: All http://astrolabesandstuff.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/precision-accuracy-medieval-astronomy.html
It turns out that we have been giving math problems with contrived contexts since at least the 12th century:
The Liber mahameleth, which has just been translated into English, was one of the largest books on mathematics written in the Middle Ages.
And some of the problems might look familiar:
A messenger is sent to a town and advances daily by twenty miles. In how many days will another messenger, sent five days later and advancing daily by thirty miles, overtake him?
A good way to bring your students back to dark ages :-)
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P, MPM2D, MFM2P
I have added a couple more Geometer's Sketchpad files to my Engaging Math blog. The first is a practice file for doing the Pythagorean Theorem. This will randomly generate right triangles with either the hypotenuse or a leg missing (you decide). You can then check the solution and try another. Although PT is in the grade 8 curriculum, this file is probably not appropriate for it since in grade 8 the focus is mainly about the geometric representation.
Curriculum Tags: MPM1D, MFM1P, MPM2D, MFM2P http://engaging-math.blogspot.ca/2015/01/geometers-sketchpad-practice.html
The second one is for practicing determining the midpoint of a line segment. The first page lets you create your own problem then check the answer and the second will generate a random set of points for you to find the midpoint. Both of these files are intended for students to use directly and work really well on the free Sketchpad Explorer app on the iPad
Curriculum Tags: MPM2D http://engaging-math.blogspot.ca/2015/01/geometers-sketchpad-practice-midpoint.html
Visualizing data is always a good thing for humans. Here is a video that ties to visualize the different ways we can look at 200 calories by showing how much of different types of food equal that. It think it might have been based on this graphic that has been circulating around the web for some time.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MBF3C, MDM4U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMGUmcveQeg
I am a sucker for these videos as I think they give a real world application for vector addition. Plus the fact that this is just at one airport. That is some crazy cross winds. Thanks to Mark Esping for this one.
Curriculum Tags: MCV4U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P9OAng32F0
On a recent Mythbusters they did a whole show on Raiders of the Lost Arc. On one of the segments, they were simulating the part of the movie where Indie jumps over the chasm and they used quadratic modelling pretty explicitly to determine the distance. Too bad this is only an image of what was on my TV screen but hopefully you get the idea
Curriculum Tags: MPM2D, MFM2P, MBF3C, MCF3M, MCR3U https://twitter.com/davidpetro314/status/559891388532527104/photo/1
This is a cool exercise in proportional reasoning. In this infographic they take the size of the country and change it based on the population of the people in that country. It's also good for data management discussions about the validity or comparison of big numbers. Boooo, Canada almost disappears. Make sure you look at the original image in large format to get the whole picture
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P, MDM4U http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2015/01/28/381971608/india-grows-russia-shrinks-mapping-countries-by-population
Here is a really fun look at distributions via animals and an animation
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U http://vimeo.com/75089338
Although the actual activity in this post at first seems like it is more for middle school. It quickly moves into polynomials and could easily be adapted up to grade 11 with rational functions. So you might have (x) (6/x) = 6 (or something more complex)
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MFM1P, MPM1D, MCR3U, MCF3M http://squarerootofnegativeoneteachmath.blogspot.ca/2013/09/this-lesson-cost-me-1.html
Any time you can do an activity that involves toys and scatter plots, I say go for it. This time its with friction driven cars.
Curriculum Tags: MPM1D, MFM1P, MDM4U, MAP4C http://fawnnguyen.com/2013/10/10/vroom-vroom.aspx
The age old question, "do professional teams that spend the most on their payrolls win more?" From Yummy Math here are stats from the big four professional sports to help answer the question. Let your scatter plots go wild. And if that is not enough for you then take a look at this dynamic view of professional baseball with this cool series of visualizations from Ben Fry.
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U http://www.yummymath.com/2013/do-teams-that-spend-a-lot-win-a-lot/
Why does the number 1729 show up so often in the show Futurama? I will give you a hint, it has something to do with taxicabs and the fact that there were a large proportion of math majors writing for the show. A perfect starter if you are talking about powers of numbers, specifically cubes.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8 http://io9.com/why-does-the-number-1729-show-up-in-so-many-futurama-ep-1445512975
This could be a good starter for a talk about budgets in an locally developed or workplace math class. Thanks to Corrie Silva for this one.
Curriculum Tags: MAT1L, MAT2L, MEL3E, MEL4E http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pQJxGIFzdo
I have seen a better version of this clip but for the life of me couldn't find it. Still a neat answer to the question "What is any of this good for? When would we ever use it?" from Person of Interest. The idea is that everything we ever know is hidden in the digits of Pi. Thanks to Kimberly Gibson for this one. Thanks also to @ChrisHunter36 for the better version of this
Curriculum Tags: All http://vimeo.com/58436405
Here is a neat Flikr group Geometric Images in Real Life. Over 700 images of things that relate to geometry. This could be really helpful when trying to make those connections between geometry and real life.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P http://www.flickr.com/groups/geometryinreallife/
I never fail to point out when teachers create and share their stuff, especially when it is clear that it has taken a bit of time or take some skill. For many, creating Explain Everything files can be a chore but when you have people like @MrOrr_Geek, those who might not have the time to create these have a friend in him. In this case, its some resources on some review materials for percent for grade 11 MEL students. There are a couple of files (both dealing with percent). One is a nice re introduction to the notion of percents called Percent Pile Up and the other is a practice file called Random Winner. Of course even though he used it for grade 11 as a review, it would be appropriate all the way down to grade 7.
One of the nice things about this list that @MathyCathy is sharing of Desmos activities is that it kind of does a better job of the current Desmos search engine. Her list of some of her favourite activities including this nice integer card sort is great. Add the fact that there is a nice rubric for students creating Explain Everything recordings and you've got a nice set of resources here.
There is a lot of talk in the educational community about Math Talks. A lot of time we hear about this stuff for elementary but this post from @dsladkey does a great job in telling us how to apply this concept to secondary school. So look at this post for ideas for 10 days of Number Talks for Secondary.
