Math Links for Week Ending June 20th, 2014

"Part of the joy of the Booster Maxxx is knowing that every few weeks, a bunch of underpaid Eastern-European carnies take it apart and put it back together again in another city, significantly increasing the chances of a catastrophic accident."

And so starts a series of calculations to figure out where you would land if this amusement park ride failed and launched you instead. Although a bit morbid, this series of calculations would be well suited for any class talking about parabolic/projectile motion. I like the use of Google Maps and streetview to enhance the solution.
Curriculum Tags: MPM2D, MFM2P, MCR3U, MCF3M, MBF3C
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-far-are-you-flung-when-an-amusement-park-ride-goes-terribly-wrong

I really like this post about using an area model for dealing with quadratic equations. I have been an advocate for that for years but I had never seen this kind of treatment. Using the snap cubes to represent each term for various values of x is neat. And I love the different visual representations of each stage. Check it out.
Curriculum Tags: MPM2D, MFM2P
http://slamdunkmath.blogspot.ca/2014/06/area-length-width.html


This dynamic sketch from the folks at Sketchpad is an interesting way to attack the problem of dynamic software. That is, if you have a dynamic sketch that shows the sum of the angles in a triangle always equal 180o then what might happen is that the dynamic nature may be too quick for students to grasp the very thing you want them to. So they have modified the sketch with virtual protractors so that kids actually have to make the measurements of the angles.
Curriculum Tags: Gr8, MFM1P, MPM1D
http://blog.keycurriculum.com/questioning-some-dynamic-geometry-angle-wisdom/

Here is another connections to math in the movies. This one is dealing with the idea of error calculations and the movie Divergent.
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
http://www.statslife.org.uk/significance/1345-the-search-for-divergents-and-measurement-error









I wasn't sure about this one at first but then I realized that we do have to try to reach every student and for those who are artistically inclined, this can be a way to get them engaged in the math you are doing. thanks to Peter Wright for this one
Curriculum Tags: All
http://www.teacher-support-force.com/teaching-math-with-art.html

This article focuses on a book called How not to be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking. I like the reference to the Stock Broker's fallacy problem too. Thanks to Michele Cooper for this one.
Curriculum Tags: All

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/parenting/if-you-ever-wondered-how-math-class-could-help-you-later-in-life-heres-your-answer/article19221765/

Although, technically, I think the methods this kid uses are outside of our grade 12 calculus course, it is still interesting. From a scientific perspective, I liked how meticulous he was in taking his measurements.
Curriculum Tags: MCV4U
https://student.societyforscience.org/blog/eureka-lab/teen-puts-calculus-ice

I have seen a few different versions of this shirt but I think this one is the one that is most mathematically correct. Thanks to Michele Cooper for this one.
Curriculum Tags: MCR3U, MHF4U
http://www.redbubble.com/people/malcolmwest/works/12091162-holy-shift-look-at-the-asymptote-on-that-mother-function?p=t-shirt

At 538 they literally post tonnes of stuff every day. So you are bound to find something you will like relating to data. This week it is data about PBS Artist Bob Ross. You may know him as the guy who teaches you how to paint landscapes. Well they have the data on all the elements that he has included in his paintings and here they are
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MBF3C, MDM4U
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-statistical-analysis-of-the-work-of-bob-ross/

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 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 Nov. 1st, 2013

Spectacular visualization from the NBA. You choose the team and the player and see where they are hot and where they are not. They have also done some more detailed analysis of how entire teams do against each other that is pretty cool.
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
http://hotshotcharts.com/

I am always on the lookout for datasets for analysis. Did you know the wettest place in Canada is Henderson, BC? Or that the coldest place is Snag, Yukon? Here is data on weather extremes in Canada
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MBF3C, MDM4U
http://www.currentresults.com/Weather-Extremes/Canada/

Correlation is often confused with causation. This is a problem when people believe that just because two variables are correlated that one of the variable's change is the cause of the other's. Here is a tutorial video on proving causation.
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
http://learnandteachstatistics.wordpress.com/2013/10/21/proving-causation/

A throwback to Felix Baumgartner's Redbull Stratos Jump from Explore Learning. A full three part lesson with links to specific Gizmos. Now the lesson basically focus on physics but I still contend that all of the metrics that were on the screen as he first rose in the capsule that could be used for a lesson on ratio, rate and speed. When it was happening I actually took some screen shots. You can download all 20 of them here.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P
http://explorelearning.blogs.com/ontario/2013/10/fearless-freefall-felix-updated.html

I thought this was a neat way to collect data. Play Mastermind and then do the analysis. In this case its done in a 4th grade class but this could easily be adapted to be done in a Data Management class when dealing with single variable statistics.
http://rationalexpressions.blogspot.com/2013/10/mastermind-part-1-solving-and-making.html
http://rationalexpressions.blogspot.com/2013/10/mastermind-part-2-refining-our-notion.html
http://rationalexpressions.blogspot.com/2013/10/mastermind-part-3-whats-typical-number.html

What is it like to be a mathematician?
Curriculum Tags: All
http://www.slate.com/what_is_it_like_to_be_a_mathematician






The myth of "I'm Bad at Math". A lot of discussion about this article on the Interwebs. Lots of people on both sides. Although the article doesn't mention it explicitly. The theory tends to be that many have what is called a fixed mindset rather than a growth mindset. That is, with a fixed mindset you think that you are born with a certain ability and that won't change. Whereas a growth mindset is when you believe that you can always continue to learn. Recent brain info seems to suggest that the growth mindset is supported. Check the following articles out for yourself.
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/10/the-myth-of-im-bad-at-math/280914/

That being said here is a counter point. Thanks to @mathtans for pointing this one out.
http://rationalexpressions.blogspot.ca/2013/10/someone-is-wrong-on-interne-bad-at-math.html

Here is some research to support the idea of how foster the growth model of learning
http://dev.opeq.blenderbox.com/uploads/files/868cea31-5888-4e45-a832-62b4377dbbfb.pdf

And to finish this topic off, let's hear about being a math major. I saw this a last week and forgot to put it in. Thanks to Sylvie Gava-Zompanti for reminding me of it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs9aGVUZ3YA

Ha ha funny. From Vine (and on the Vine YouTube channel) here is a clip about nerd vandalism
Curriculum Tags: All
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvHpN9WeFAA

New from Vi Hart for Fractals and Logs. After I see her videos like this I think she should be ending with "See what I did there?"
Curriculum Tags: MHF4U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc8sWN_jNF4

The Beauty of Mathematics in widescreen
Curriculum tags: All
http://vimeo.com/77330591

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.