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 Aug. 30, 2013

Data from Twitter has given empirical data to measure the subtle differences between a nerd and a
geek. 2.6 million tweets from Dec 2012 were analyzed to find terms associated with geek and nerd and a cool graph was born.
http://slackprop.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/on-geek-versus-nerd/
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U

From Kyle Pearce we have a new addition to the 3Act Task cannon. This time dealing with linear relations, proportional reasoning and mowing the lawn.
http://tapintoteenminds.com/2013/08/24/mowing-the-lawn-three-act-math-task/
Curriculum Tags: MPM1D, MFM1P

Everyone that teaches quadratics will eventually use a "frame" problem. Here is a nice rework of an already good activity dealing with this type of problem from the I Speak Math blog
http://ispeakmath.org/2013/05/02/quadratic-frames-totally-nguyening/
Curriculum Tags: MPM2D, MFM2P

Is algebra needed? Some words from a novelist telling us why we don't need it. Do you agree?
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-08/argument-against-algebra
Curriculum Tags: All

New from Vi Hart. Doodling in Math class returns. This time the dragon curve fractal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdyociU35u8
Curriculum Tags: all

Everyone needs a calculus cartoon
Curriculum Tags\: MCV4U
http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3087

Math Links for Week Ending Apr 26th, 2013

Get the Math has been around for a couple of years but when it first came out it only had a few activities. Not sure how I cam across it again but I see that it has expanded its content. The premiss is that it would highlight a real context that math was used and then build an interactive activity around it. So far they have fashion, music, video games, basketball, restaurants and special effects. With topics like ratio and rate, percents, plotting points, linear relations, quadratics and exponential relationships. Personally my favourite is the music activity with ratios and sampled beats. Very cool. Below is the intro video for that activity
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P, MFM2P, MPM2D, MCR3U, MCF3M, MBF3C, MAP4C, MCT4C
http://www.thirteen.org/get-the-math/

Watch Get The Math - Math in Music Intro on PBS. See more from THIRTEEN Kids.

I have mixed feelings about the whole effort to make tutorial videos about doing math. Not so much about whether they are a good idea but more about the quality of what is out there. There are certainly large repositories (the Khan Academy) but its navigating those videos can be a problem. Phoenix College has tried to address that with this simple interface. Start with a topic and then that is further broken down into sub topics until you find the video you want. Thanks to Free Technology for Teachers for turning me on to this one.
http://www.phoenixcollege.edu/academics/programs/mathematics/math-videos
Curriculum Tags: All

Download this free poster of colour coded trig identities from the Math Four site. A nice visual aid that you could print out for your grade 11 students.
http://mathfour.com/trigonometry/how-to-memorize-trig-identities-free-download
Curriculum Tags: MCR3U, MCF3M, MHF4U







I like this simple experiment. Next time it snows (hopefully not soon), fill up a glas with it and estimate the amount of water when it melts. You could create all sorts of data when doing this and then use that to connect snow fall with regular precipitation.
http://emergentmath.com/2013/04/16/snow-cylinder/
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MFM1P, MPM1D

Apparently the portion of the brain that is in charge of doing math is
localized to one area. At least that is what it seems a new research paper is saying. Read more here. Thanks to Mark Esping for this one.
http://healthland.time.com/2013/04/23/your-brain-on-math/
Curriculum Tags: All

Math Links for Week Ending Feb 15th, 2013

On this day after Valentine's day, what better way to celebrate than calculating how likely it would be to find love (and life on other planets). Could be used for percents or probability
Curriculum Tags: Grade 7, Grade 8, MDM4U, MCF3M
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/02/12/the-math-of-love/

I think that applications like this "Robot" kit is a great way to apply ideas in math classrooms. However I disagree with one of the things the guy says in the video. That "kids these days don't want to learn abstract math". I don't think most kids ever want to learn abstract math. However it is important to try to learn abstract content. Not for the sake of the content but for the sake of the brain exercise needed to master that content. Regardless, this is pretty cool.
http://mashable.com/2013/02/08/robots-drones-classroom/
Curriculum Tags: All

One of the things you can do if you have a YouTube account (and if you have a Gmail account, by default, you have one), is to create playlists of videos. Here a teacher has created two play lists. One to fit in to the Advanced Functions course and one for the grade 11 University course. And what she has done is linked the videos to the textbooks she is using by labeling the videos by textbook section. So the Advanced functions is linked to the McGraw Hill Textbook and the Grade 11 U videos are linked to the Nelson book.
MCR3U: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL267D675176AFDA06
MHF4U: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB593B541513EA001
Curriculum Tags: MCR3U, MHF4U

Here is a nice simple introduction to inverse functions. Worksheet included
http://drawingonmath.blogspot.ca/2013/02/inverse-functions.html
Curriculum Tags: MCR3U

Here is a nice little activity about creating quadrilaterals based on being given one side.
http://donsteward.blogspot.ca/2013/01/complete-quadrilateral.html
Curriculum Tags: Grade 7






Here are three versions of Dan Meyer's Stacking Cups task. Its a great task for linear relationships and could be used for grade 9&10 applied & academic depending on whether you just use the idea of stacking a single cup or find two different types of cups and ask when will they have the same height.
Dan Meyer: http://blog.mrmeyer.com/?p=692
Andrew Stadel: http://mr-stadel.blogspot.ca/2013/01/styrofoam-cups.html
Fawn Nguyen: http://fawnnguyen.com/2013/02/05/20130204.aspx
Curriculum Tags: MPM1D, MFM1P, MPM2D, MFM2P

Although this teacher is talking about doing this for grade 8 curriculum, here in Ontario that fits the grade 10 academic curriculum. Teaching about perpendicular lines with geoboards but it could be done just as well with graph paper.
http://untilnextstop.blogspot.ca/2013/01/perpendicular-slopes-and-geoboards.html
Curriculum Tags: MPM2D

Even the cleaning person could be doing math
https://twitter.com/scottywrotem/status/199069633960087553/photo/1
Curriculum Tags: Grade 7, Grade 8, MFM1P, MPM1D

Yup we got yer bad math
http://apple.copydesk.org/2013/02/07/heres-one-for-the-pie-chart-hall-of-fame/
Curriculum Tags: Grade 7

Math links for the Week Ending Feb 8th, 2013

The first of two really good 3Acts Tasks from Dan Meyer. The first one is perfect for intersection of lines. Click here for the first act video. Click on this link for the full task
http://threeacts.mrmeyer.com/ditchdiggers/
Curriculum Tags:MFM2P, MPM2D


In the 2nd 3Acts Task, Dan uses bubble wrap to generated quadratic data. Below is the first video. Click here to see the entire task.
http://threeacts.mrmeyer.com/bubblewrap/
Curriculum Tags:MFM2P, MPM2D


Act 1 — Bubble Wrap from Dan Meyer on Vimeo.

This site gives a visual view of the real time traffic on Twitter. A really nice non standard representation of data

http://tweetping.net/

Curriculum Tags: Grade7, Grade8, MDM4U

We don't know what the largest prime number is but recently we discovered a new largest known prime. It has over 17 million digitshttp://lightyears.blogs.cnn.com/2013/02/06/largest-prime-number-yet-discovered/

Curriculum Tags: Grade 7, Grade 8

Indexed has always been a quirky site. With its venn diagrams and emotional graphs. Here's one that could be related to quadratic relations.
http://thisisindexed.com/2013/02/how-to-say-everything-without-a-word/
Curriculum Tags: MPM2D, MFM2P

Math links for Week Ending Feb 1st, 2013

How do you show a graph when you are on the radio? You convert it to music and have an opera singer sing it of course. I have just been getting caught up on some of my older podcasts and heard this great piece by Planet Money. Rather than just describe the graph seen on the right, they converted it to music and had it sung. Perfect for showing that data can be represented in many ways.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/04/27/135737940/the-case-shiller-index-sung-as-opera
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MDM4U, MAP4C

Is the Body Mass Index (BMI) really that useful if it says people like Brad Pitt are considered overweight? In fact, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is actually obese according to the BMI. Here's another adjusted measure. This could be used for teaching order of operations in Gr 7 or Gr8. Just sayin
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21229387
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8

New activities from Texas Instruments. The first set has Linear functions, Analytic Geometry, Polynomials, Rational Functions & Normal Distributions
http://link.ti-enews.com/YesConnect/HtmlMessagePreview?a=pC3-l-skG1wkDYGjGXnVfu
The second set has Linear Functions, Quadrilaterals, Logarithmic Functions and Sampling Distributions
http://link.ti-enews.com/YesConnect/HtmlMessagePreview?a=pi0i0eskG1wkDYGjH1DDB-
Curriculum Tags: MFM1P, MPM1D, MFM2P, MPM2D, MHF4U, MDM4U



Want to develop the value of Pi using Archimedes Principle of Exhaustion? Who doesn't? You can do it here at the Nova site with a handy dandy interactive applet. While you are there check out their other applets for math and science as well as full episodes of Nova.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/approximating-pi.html
Curriculum Tags: Gr8

Numberphile just released a video post compiling the results from their quest to find YouTube's favourite number. Here is the blog post that gives the detailed results of the data as well as the summary video and original videos. Great for any Data Management class
http://periodicvideos.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/popular-numbers.html
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MAP4C, MDM4U




In the Numberphile post below you may have noticed that there are some limit expressions. These were produced by an online LaTeX equation editor that lets you create equations and then paste HTML code into your web pages (or images into your documents). A useful thing if you have ever needed to put math in a webpage
http://www.codecogs.com/latex/eqneditor.php
Curriculum Tags: All

A great video by Numberphile on the problems with dividing by zero and the idea of 0⁰. A nice discussion of and (and others).
Curriculum Tags: MCV4U

Here is a nice image to talk about both bad math and rates
http://i.imgur.com/zH6jQlp.jpg
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P









And another in the Watermelon Series:
http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/236x/0c/b9/05/0cb9056c7faaa6321c5a94dde55f5aa1.jpg
Curriculum Tags:All