Math Links for Week Ending May 2nd, 2014

More than 30,000 people were surveyed and asked what their favourite number was. Spoiler alert, it was 7. Or more specifically, of all the numbers that people suggested as their favourite (there were over 1100), 7 came up the most (9.7% of people chose it) and 3 came up 2nd (7.5% of people chose it). This is what Alex Bellos found and you can download the entire Excel spreadsheet here (I do love data sets). Perfect for any data management class. It really is interesting what numbers people chose and how many chose each. And don't forget to check out Alex's books Alex Through the Looking Glass (called the Grapes of Math in NA) & Alex's Adventures in Numberland
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MBF3C, MDM4U
http://pages.bloomsbury.com/favouritenumber

A couple from Nate Silver. The first is about what the statistics tell us about the flipped diversity between owners of professional teams and their players. Any data we can get about sports can help us capture the interest of some of our sport minded students.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MBF3C, MDM4U
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/diversity-in-the-nba-the-nfl-and-mlb/

The second link from Nate Silver really hits at the heart of using proper sampling. Here a poll tried to gauge the interest of the US population that were interested in the World Cup. However, they only conducted the poll in english and so it suffered from Non response bias from the large Hispanic population that may only speak Spanish. You can see why this is significant when you see the results of the Hispanics that did answer the poll and how they outnumber every other ethnic group.
Read about all the details here.
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/to-gauge-americans-interest-in-the-world-cup-ask-some-people-in-spanish/

I really like this calculus app. In it you are given a particular function and then asked to trace out the derivative. A really neat concept. I also like how it scores your attempt (yay for me, I got 95% accuracy on my last attempt). My biggest complaint is that its flashed based. So iPads are out. But if you have a flash ready tablet, then you are good to go. I think this is important because I think any "tracing" app is hard to actually do with a mouse so a tablet is really helpful. Thanks to Mark Esping for this one.
Curriculum Tags: MCV4U
http://www.flashandmath.com/mathlets/calc/derdraw/DerivativeDraw.html

I hesitated to include this one because its about a celebrity complaining about math curriculum. Stick to acting. This is not as bad as Jenny McCarthy's campaign against autism but still. Also because I actually like Louis CK's comedy stylings. Thanks to Michele Cooper for this one.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2014/05/louis-ck-against-the-common-core.html

A new video from Numberphile about ordering cards. Something you can tie into permutations in data management. 

Curriculum Tags: MDM4U

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwIAfkuXc5A

I like watching Sunday Morning on CBS but last week they revealed their math chops. Here is something you can bring up when talking about polls or even when you are trying to teach the fact that if you are trying to measure percents of a whole, those percents should add up to no more than 100. I thought maybe there was a venn diagram in there somewhere that made those numbers make sense but I don't think there is.

Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MDM4U

https://twitter.com/17cagey/status/460417513973489665/photo/1

Math Links for Week Ending Dec. 6, 2013

OK, so I am not going to say much about the features of Math Disk except to say watch the video below and try not to be impressed with all it does. Ok, so maybe I will mention some of the features. Algebraic and numerical calculations, function and statistical plots, probability, dynamic geometry and 3D vector plots (amazing stuff ripe for MCV4U) and even physics simulations (you can actually play angry birds). There is an iPad version as well. Though it doesn't have all the functionality, by creating an account on your computer, you can open and manipulate any files on the iPad. That being said, because it does so much, there will be a bit of a learning curve to figure out how to use it. There are a number of support articles and of course there are a pile of how to videos. My only complaint about these is that there doesn't seem to be any verbal instructions. They just show you how to do things. So when I was trying to make a dynamic plot, I found it hard to just watch what they were doing and mimic it on my screen without watching a few times. But once I got the gist of what to do the graphs and sketches started to flow. And its totally free. Go ahead, try to not be impressed by this. Thanks to Free Technology for Teachers for pointing this out.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://www.mathdisk.com/

The second of two graphing applets today is called Plotly. Now I know in Ontario we have both Fathom and Tinkerplots to use freely at home or school and many of us also have Excel and possibly Google Docs now but this package does just about every type of graph relatively easily. That is something that none of the above mentioned can do. Excel is pretty good at making line, bar and circle graphs (same with Google Docs) and Fathom and Tinker plots are great for graphing microdata (scatter plots, histograms, box plots and dot plots). But Plotly does them all. Histograms, box plots, bar graphs, line graphs and my new favourite: heat maps among others. I do find it interesting that circle plots are curiously omitted (probably a nod to those statistics folks who think they are among the most misused and awful types of graphs). All of the graphs have mouse over features and can be customized. As an added bonus it seems to work fine on an iPad (sans mouse over features) and you can even import your data from Dropbox or Google Drive. I suggest looking gallery to see the scope of what can be done and at the tutorials to master any of the idiosyncratic features of making these graphs. And of course, don't forget to create an account to save all of your graphs.
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
https://plot.ly/

Depending on how anal you are about pseudo random generators (purists among you will no doubt harp that any electronic random generator is not, in fact, random - and you would probably be right), you may think this is cool or useless. Flip a day has one purpose. To flip a real coin once per day and post the result. That's it. As of today they are at 220 flips. You can follow them on Twitter and download the csv file as well.
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
http://flipaday.co/

If you haven't used Dragon Box, I think you are missing out. I truly believe it is one of the best games out there that actually teaches a math concept. It runs on multi platforms and isn't that expensive. But how would you actually use it in a classroom to teach solving equations? Thanks to Tap into Teen Minds you are one step closer to figuring that out. Thanks Kyle
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P, MPM2D, MFM2P
http://tapintoteenminds.com/2013/11/24/how-to-effectively-use-dragonbox-in-your-solving-equations-lesson/


Do you need an example of something big to give some meaning to number sense calculations? Well how about info around the largest container ship ever built? Here are some stats over 1600ft long (longer than the Empire State Building is tall), 600 000 tonnes. It is basically a floating liquifying natural gas (FLNG) facility that mines, processes and can store up to 3.9 million tonnes of liquid natural gas each year. To get a sense of how much use out of that gas consider that the average family might use about 2000-3000 cubic metres of natural gas during the year (in gaseous form - click here to help convert that)
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/12/worlds-largest-ship/

I love this "proof without words" of the area of the circle and how it can be connected to the area of a triangle. You probably could even get into some calculus talk in terms of infinitesimal slices of a circle to I guess
Curriculum Tags: Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whYqhpc6S6g