Math Links for Week Ending Feb. 21st, 2014

This past week the Centre for Education in Mathematics and Computing held its annual grade 9, 10 & 11 math contests (Pascal, Cayley & Fermat). They are great contests and you can see the archives here. I really like how they are written so that just about any math student can find some success but only the best can get them all right. That being said, one nice feature on the site is their Problem of the Week. They have a set for grades 5/6, 7/8, 9/10 and 11/12 that they create. Sign up to get them emailed to you each week.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://cemc.uwaterloo.ca/resources/potw.php

How to Learn Mathematics: for Teachers and Parents is an online course created by Joe Boaler from Stanford. Based on the latest research, this is the new version of last year's How to Learn Mathematics. By all accounts last year's course was awesome (I just didn't have the time in the summer to take it). This year one of the differences is that it's not free ($125). The course is self paced and you have any time between June 15th and Sept 15th to complete it. The course is made up of 8 sessions and it is anticipated that each will take 1-2 hours. As the title suggests, this is for teachers and parents but eventually there will be a course for students as well. For more info, follow the link.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://scpd.stanford.edu/instanford/how-to-learn-math.jsp

More in the "why I like Desmos" series. They have done a lot to making the boringness of domain and range a lot more interesting for students. And this time here is an example that combines both domain & range and transformations. That is, an animated version of Pong.
Curriculum Tags: MCR3U
https://www.desmos.com/calculator/3imoiky3uv

Its been a few years since I have done this but its worth mentioning. The Barbie Bungy is a great activity. It has shown up many places on the net and here is the latest (with mention to some of the others). The perfect activity for when you need to have a fun way to look at scatterplots and extrapolation.
Curriculum Tags: MFM1P, MPM1D
http://mrvaudrey.com/2014/02/15/barbie-bungee-2014/

A few weeks ago there was a Numberphile video about why people don't like math. I think this essay really adds to that theme. The premiss is that you never took math in high school since all you probably did was algorithms. Thanks to mike's math page for this one.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://www.edsurge.com/n/2014-02-12-opinion-you-never-did-math-in-high-school

Forget Moneyball and Big Data and watch out Nate Silver, the punch cards are coming. Not sure how real this is but its got that kitchie 50s feel that using data to model basketball game play only could have.
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhh8Ao4yweQ

I like this Tumblr for images that help visualize mathematics. Some cool stuff here. Some are animated gifs, others have information to go with them. I like this one that Dan Meyer pointed out about the connection between Fibonacci and Pascal's Triangle.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://visualizingmath.tumblr.com/

I love this graph about how Lego's revenues have increase since it started licensing characters from movies that is made out of Legos
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MBF3C, MDM4U, MAP4C
http://www.wired.com/underwire/2014/02/infoporn-legos/

This is belated but still fun
Curriculum Tags: All
http://www.mathforgrownups.com/happy-valentines-day/

Math Links for Week Ending Feb. 14th, 2014

It's Valentine's Day today so why not have a post with carderoids in them. Thanks Desmos.

Curriculum Tags: All

https://www.desmos.com/calculator/4dqgvrtdze

Trig identities a can be and issue as their abstractness can be a hurdle for many kids. Don't get me wrong, I think it's important for our kids to be able to work in abstractions but if there are ways to make topics less abstract than they need to be, then I think that's a good thing. That is why I like this post about a graphical way to get to the Pythagorean trig identities. Well done.
Curriculum Tags: MCR3U
http://samjshah.com/2014/02/10/trigonometric-pythagorean-identities/

I love learning stuff about things I like. For example, to day I learned you can import pictures into Desmos from Mary at the M^3 blog. I love doing this with Geometer's Sketchpad (my premade sketch is here) but now that I know Desmos does it that gives a nice alternative. Although I do like my sketch because it has a feature to scale the axes so that the equation actually has a connection to real measurements. So take a look at this blog post and if you want some more images to use, you can look at some I have collected here.
Curriculum Tags: MFM2P, MPM2D, MCR3U, MCF3M, MBF3C
http://marybourassa.blogspot.ca/2014/02/mfm2p-day-6.html

There is nothing like a real contextual problem to expose the problem people have with probability (a lot of "prob's" in that sentance). Here is the context. You are taking a medical test that is 95% accurate when people have the disease (in this case cancer). So this means there are 5% false positives. If your results come back positive, should you be concerned? The counter intuitive result is "no". John Allen Paolos wrote about this 4 years ago (and just retweeted it now) in the context of mammograms. So here's the scenario: 95% accurate when people have cancer, 99% accurate when people don't have cancer and assume that 0.5% of the 100,000 person population actually have cancer. I will leave it up to you to do the math or you can just click on the link below.
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/magazine/13Fob-wwln-t.html?_r=3&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y&

I think one of the best things you can do for students is not give them the answers. To take Dan Meyer's tag line "less helpful". I realize that this is totally counter intuitive to teachers. Most of us got into teaching because we like telling people how to do stuff. So when a kid asks a question (or gives an answer that is wrong), it is a natural reaction to just give them the answer (or just say 'nope'). But why not, instead, lead them to the answer or at least have them reveal their thinking (even when they are correct). That is why I like this post from Andrew Stadel so much. It gives tips on how to approach those situations in ways that will best benefit the student.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://mr-stadel.blogspot.ca/2014/02/explain-that-please.html

For any of you teaching conversion from metric to imperial (and vise versa), this video from Matt Parker gives a nice overview of the logic behind the imperial system.
Curriculum Tags: MFM2P, MBF3C, MAP4C
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7x-RGfd0Yk