Math Links for Week Ending June 9th, 2017

If you haven't seen @MrOrr_Geek's Math Before Bed then shame on you. The good news is that you're in luck. He just launched the companion site https://mathbeforebed.com/ . One of my favourite things about Math Before Bed is that you might get the impression that it's a book just for younger kids and that is probably who it's aimed for. But there are great questions that are framed in a way that a younger kid could do but touch on much bigger topics. And just about any of these could be used as a math starter or discussion piece in just about any class. And if you like this then you might want to get your own copy for your kids.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://mathbeforebed.com/

I have been neglecting my Found Data site for months now. I have many unfinished posts so I thought I would start to clean that up. One of first ones I had to get out was this Github site from Five Thirty Eight. Of course Five Thirty Eight are all about data and, as it turns out, there are a bunch of their stories that they have made the data sets available. And some of these sets are huge. Like this one about Classic Rock that has over 37000 pieces of data. So if you are looking for some interesting sets of data (especially categorical data) then check this out.
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
http://found-data.blogspot.ca/2017/06/five-thirty-eights-pile-of-data.html

The other thing I did this week was start to generate some dynamic 3D sketches for the vector unit of MCV4U using Geogebra. These will probably only be useful to you if you are using the McGraw Hill Calculus and Vectors textbook as they are just dynamic versions of the chapter 7 examples (chapter 8 is to come).
Curriculum Tags: MCV4U
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dVl5A_kJLSEMs_OgRcnuQWNWpMF8y8NoURC7tTOwDoI/edit?usp=sharing

In May our school board celebrated Canada 150 by asking students to come up with math questions that were about Canada that had an answer of 150. You can see some of the results here on Twitter. @Mathletepearce is also getting into the Canada 150 spirit by having students at his board complete some Canada 150 challenges. Here's a great proportional reasoning 3Act task dealing with a large rubber duck and the CN Tower.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P
https://tapintoteenminds.com/3act-math/giant-rubber-duck/

I have seen this dynamic sketch for Geometer's Sketchpad but someone has done the math and created it for Desmos. Approximating Pi by the Method of Exhaustion is super cool and interesting that it has been done for centuries with little technology. Thanks to @Esping_Math for pointing out this one.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://www.desmos.com/calculator/dqb20fhld3

Tired of hearing about fidget spinners? Turn it into a math problem about how fast the spinner is going.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWCAlJ1vsqc

This is a neat site that is set up for people when they are out of school to brush up on their math skills. But there is a lot of stuff you could use in classes too.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://www.citizenmaths.com/

Well said. Thanks to @kmarkpet for this one:
Curriculum Tags: All
https://twitter.com/rashellelofgren/status/871354354581868544

Math is being an adventurer, artist, and scientist. Poetic words from Brian Conrey. #WCSmission #BecomingMath pic.twitter.com/RDqcccIeV0

— Rashelle Lofgren (@rashellelofgren) June 4, 2017

So simple but it could yield so much discussion. And check out @mathforlove's comment with a slight tweak.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://twitter.com/pgliljedahl/status/844929582813761537

Good problem for a #thinkingclassroom. Below is a random 3x3 grid of a calendar page. How many different patterns do you see? pic.twitter.com/nzncSbaS6U

— Peter Liljedahl (@pgliljedahl) March 23, 2017

Math Links for Week Ending June 2nd, 2017

I like the idea of students working on intuitive thinking. And it seems so does @markchubb3. That is what his OAME 2017 talk was about. He breaks it down slide by slide in this post.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://buildingmathematicians.wordpress.com/2017/05/25/building-our-students-mathematical-intuition/

I have not seen this type of activity before. It's called a spider puzzle. In this case they are for mean, median and mode. Here there is a set of numbers in the middle with a missing value and then various scenarios around that have to be solved by choosing the correct value. I also like the idea of using dry erase pockets to work on these sheets without actually using them.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
http://mathequalslove.blogspot.ca/2017/05/mean-median-mode-and-range-spider.html

I love the theorem that if you take any quadrilateral, take the midpoints of each side and connect them and no matter what you will always create a parallelogram. Apparently this is called Varignon's theorem and thanks to @dpscher we now have a dynamic sketch to play around with it
http://www.sineofthetimes.org/digging-deep-into-varignons-theorem/




I like this little activity from the folks at @desmos. It's relatively simple but does a good job in visualizing proportional reasoning and direct variation
Curriculum Tags: MPM1D, MFM1P
http://blog.desmos.com/post/161108227092/friday-fave-for-may-26

This is old but if you are looking for a video demonstrating projectile motion ......
Curriculum Tags: MPM2D, MFM2P, MCR3U, MCF3M, MBF3C
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SjX7A_FR6g

If you haven't been to the Would You Rather Math site. Check it out. Here's the latest
Curriculum Tags: All
http://www.wouldyourathermath.com/depreciation/

Math Links for Week Ending May 26th, 2017

I love the idea that @ddmeyer has to make people new to Twitter feel welcomed. He commissioned a Chrome extension that scrapes Twitter and looks for certain criteria then pushes those Tweets his way where he can respond. I this case he gives them a "hello" from the Twittervers (specifically the MTBoS). Try it out
Curriculum Tags: All
http://blog.mrmeyer.com/2017/how-i-welcome-newcomers-to-online-teacher-professional-development-aka-the-mtbos-and-how-you-can-too/

This is a fun little activity that connects angles with fractions and proportional reasoning. It starts in that way that is becoming familiar in the Desmos world. That is, guessing followed by something structured followed by something algebraic. You could probably do the first few slides with younger students but the algebraic stuff would be more suitable with gr9 or above.
Curriculum Tags: MPM1D, MFM1P
http://blog.desmos.com/post/160846021437/friday-fave-for-may-19

With all the math wars (back to basics or let them investigate). Of course it really needs to be a balance. But how to make that work? That's the hard part. Some insights from @HTheijsmeijer on the topic.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://byodasap.blogspot.ca/2017/05/finding-balance-in-math.html

At the helm at Critical Math was @Roosloan sharing her curated list of research about that thing called math.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://criticalmath.ca/2017/05/11/a-collection-of-research-articles-curated-by-roosloan/

I have always suspected that stickynote glue was stronger than you think. The trick, apparently, is the way that you apply the force. Check out the video and then the 3Act math task that @mathletepearce put together around it.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P
https://tapintoteenminds.com/3act-math/sticky-note-challenge/

A couple of image related puzzles on Five Thirty Eight's Riddler column. For example this one about trying to cut this figure into three pieces that can then create a square.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/can-you-do-math-without-numbers/

The geometry of fruit
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
http://geometrymatters.tumblr.com/post/160508152074/geometrymatters-geometry-of-fruits-and

Some fun animations. Click on the link to see them all
Curriculum Tags: All
http://geometrymatters.tumblr.com/post/160483205334/curiosamathematica-source-adam-plouff

Math Links for Week Ending May 19th, 2017

This site is so slick. The premiss is trying to measure the repetitiveness in songs by seeing how compressible the lyrics are. That itself might not be so exciting but the way that they present the data is very neat. Just scroll down the page and see it presented to you in a dynamic way. There are interactive graphs so you can test out your own theories. Even if all you do is look at the normal distribution it's still pretty cool. I only wish all the data was available for download.  Thanks to @Esping_math for this one.
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
https://pudding.cool/2017/05/song-repetition/index.html

Need an Ontario Math resource. Look no further than ontariomathedresources.ca Of course you can just go to the Edugains site but this new (or at least new to me) site is a bit nicer looking and simplified. A one stop shopping for some of the more popular topics. Thanks to Gisele Jobin for pointing this one out.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://ontariomathedresources.ca/

Some links are still coming in from OAME 2017. This time @rossisen takes a problem seen in one of @tomsteinke 's session and turns it into a dynamic web sketch. Click through on the blog to get to the dynamic sketch and explore.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://mathfest.blogspot.ca/2017/05/another-visualization-task.html






A pile of educators were at the RMS Symposium this week and @Pi_lab showed us this problem about a student's conjecture about area and perimeter. In this post @Rossisen extends the problem with some neat insights.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://mathfest.blogspot.ca/2017/05/exploring-area-and-perimeter.html



A few weeks ago I was looking for some good resources on representing dividing fractions and settled on using a "jump along" model. Eventually I'm probably going to make a websketch to model it but in the mean time @MsbJacobs has some insight into using concrete representations when dividing fractions.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
http://themathguy.blogspot.ca/2017/05/a-concrete-diagrammatic-symbolic.html

Here @mathgarden talks about the idea of resilience in students.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://medium.com/@sunilsingh_42118/mathematical-resilience-must-be-an-experience-before-it-can-be-an-expectation-6540e4412c06

@MrOrr_Geek did his Ignite session at OAME 2017 on why he is picky. He wants you to be too. Watch below and then go to the link for all the play by play.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://mrorr-isageek.com/being-picky-ignite-session-oame-2017/
Being Picky- OAME 2017 from Jon Orr on Vimeo.

I heard about @PaiMath's Ignite at OAME 2017 from other people and I am glad he's posted his video so we can all hear his poem "Be You"
Curriculum Tags: All
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXhlZ_r2Cf8

I love this reminder from @AlexOverwijk that manipulatives are OK in an assessment setting .
Curriculum Tags: All
https://twitter.com/AlexOverwijk/status/865599168609370112

❤️ this S isn't ready to solve systems algebraically on test so is choosing the tool of manipulatives. #win #mindset pic.twitter.com/2IthzT7SJf

— Alex Overwijk (@AlexOverwijk) May 19, 2017

I love this connection between Google searches in and around the Kentucky Derby
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
https://twitter.com/FiveThirtyEight/status/860983765119647744

Mint Juleps are good for more than just 2 minutes at the #KentuckyDerby. https://t.co/ipipy1MFWK pic.twitter.com/9GGTJRBzaD

— FiveThirtyEight (@FiveThirtyEight) May 6, 2017

I love this proportionally sized multiplication chart.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
https://twitter.com/Mathgarden/status/861039746251993089

.@robertkaplinsky for this:) pic.twitter.com/PEpMbzIea3

— Sunil Singh (@Mathgarden) May 7, 2017

I forgot I took this picture of a hollowed out cement sphere in Toronto.
Curriculum Tags: Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P
https://www.instagram.com/p/BT7QsFiF4_O/

There's a #math question in here somewhere

A post shared by David Petro (@lookimyourfather) on May 10, 2017 at 1:53pm PDT

What kinds of symmetry do you see here?
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
https://twitter.com/davidpetro314/status/864904637022908416

What questions come to mind? #RMSOntario #mathchat pic.twitter.com/wSWv3GyZtS

— David Petro (@davidpetro314) May 17, 2017

Math Links for Week Ending May 12th, 2017

This Week's Ontario Math Links will be an all OAME edition. So I'll focus on what I saw and heard. Keep in mind that this is only a sliver of what went on. To start I was either a presenter or co presenter on three sessions. The one that I've been working on for so long is the presentation I did with Gisele Jobin on the launch of our iTunes U course "Letting Students Think in Grade 9 Math".

It's a collection of some of our favourite activities that help students do more than just calculate in class but instead encourage thinking. Eventually there will be a companion iBook but for now you can subscribe to the course for all the info. The slideshow is here but you can subscribe at the link below.
Curriculum Tags: MPM1D, MFM1P
http://engaging-math.blogspot.ca/p/itunes-u.html

The one session I did on my own was a combination of a few blog posts I did last year on finding the math in Pokemon Go!. The game is not as popular as before but many of your students likely still have all the data on their phones just waiting to be mined. Get the slide show here and the full activities at the links below.
Curriculum Tags: MPM1D, MFM1P, MPM2D, MFM2P, MCR3U, MBF3C, MAP4C, MDM4U
http://found-data.blogspot.ca/2016/09/collecting-data-from-pokemon-go.html
http://found-data.blogspot.ca/2016/07/is-levelling-up-in-pokemon-go.html

The other session that I did was with @MrsGascho. We were part of the Grade 9 project for the last few years and in the summer we co presented a session in the summer institute on "Meaningful use of Technology in Grade 9 Math" and that lead to the creation of the Math 4 the Nines project that collected all of the research findings and also included several "Workshops in a Bag" for all of the sessions. That is, for each of the workshops from the summer, teams developed a zipped folder of the slideshows and all of the supporting files so that anyone could do the presentations. So that's what we did, we took the workshop we developed and presented it. Get our presentation here and all of the others at the link below
Curriculum Tags: MPM1D, MFM1P
http://math4thenines.ca/professional-learning.html

The first session that I went to was "Teaching Function Notation with Coding" from Jeffrey Peck and Stephanie McKean. It's a great fit as coding is basically an application of functions. We were coding at the site below in PHP and it didn't take long for all of us to have our first sets of code that used functions.
Curriculum Tags: MCR3U
http://sandbox.onlinephpfunctions.com/

I really liked the session from @MsLoneyMath and @KatherinOHara on "Hands On Activities for 1L/2L Math". We really needed more time but there was a lot of stuff that we tried out for fractions, proportional reasoning, measurement and more. Their presentation is a Smart Notebook file and be sure to click on the paper clip icon as it is loaded with tonnes of attachments
Curriculum Tags: MAT1L, MAT2L
http://tinyurl.com/handson17



A neat session on a "Co Constructed Mathematics Program" for grade 7&8 from @katiepellerin where students were physically constructing. Specifically they were building desks and tables. We saw how they constructed their learning pathway by wrapping everything around the number sense. Check the slide deck out for their journey.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, G8
https://tinyurl.com/mkm3pbo



A very cool session from Chris Atkinson and @tomsteinke on teaching systems of equations using Geocaching. The premiss is that students will solve systems of equations that have solutions that become coordinates for waypoints to be entered into a GPS device (or phone with an app). Students then travel to those locations to get a new set of equations and a new set of coordinates. There would normally be a tonne of work to set this up in your class but they have developed a tool so you just enter the coordinates of the waypoints and it spits out all the sets of equations that need to be solved then does the combinatorics to assign various locations to each group (not all groups go to all locations). The activity was designed for grade 10 academic but the engagement factor might make it doable for grade 10 applied.
Curriculum Tags: MPM2D, MFM2P
https://tkinson.net/oame2017

I like this post from @rossisen where he took a problem seen in a @kitluce1 session that he was in and turned it into an interactive websketch. Nicely done.
Curriculum Tags: Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P
http://mathfest.blogspot.ca/2017/05/slanty-squares.html

@MathletePearce has already cobbled together his own video from his ignite session. Watch it below and then click on the link to see all the background for his talk. "Be More Prince"
Curriculum Tags: All
https://tapintoteenminds.com/beauty-elementary-mathematics/

I was in a STEM session from Alfonso Garcia where we built airplanes and launched them (see the video below) and it was very cool when we broke it down and talked abut all the connections to math that the activity had (spoiler alert, there was a lot). It was super engaging as you can see from our reaction at a successful launch (below).  You can get the plans and order the free kits at the link below.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://awim.sae.org/curriculum/glider/

We are building and launching gliders in our #STEM session. Get your free gliders here https://t.co/eSnHgjyibq… #oame2017 #mathchat pic.twitter.com/eYakXh0zhM

— David Petro (@davidpetro314) May 13, 2017

@davidpetro314 @agvplays ...Involve us and we will learn #OAME2017 pic.twitter.com/NhlT9zwFwz

— MathDDSB (@Errs5) May 13, 2017

@ddmeyer was one of the evening keynotes. His talk on Full Stack Math was spot on. Here's a couple of images. The first image was a reminder that the amount of routine jobs has been dropping and the amount of non routine jobs has been increasing.  The second image is about the nature of what tends to be valued in classes. IE there is a disconnect.
Curriculum Tags: All

And here is a great sketchnote of Dan's Task
Curriculum Tags: All
https://twitter.com/Racquel_Brown/status/863028500084740096

Inspiring words from @ddmeyer that opened our thinking #OAME2017 @OAMEcounts pic.twitter.com/8WW2XQzbiC

— RacquelB (@Racquel_Brown) May 12, 2017

I managed to see one of the Ignite sessions but those things go by so fast it's hard to keep up. But I did like this slide from @MaryBourassa on Lessons learned. Hopefully the videos will be posted soon.
Curriculum Tags: All

And here's a few other posts from the Ignite. I didn't get to see the second session but here's some shots of those. Looks like I missed some good ones.
Curriculum Tags: All

.@MrOrr_geek starts his Ignite by saying he was inspired by @mr_stadel. #MTBoS is getting a lot of love at #oame2017 pic.twitter.com/WLUBrubtwA

— Mary Bourassa (@MaryBourassa) May 12, 2017

.@MatthewOldridge throwing everything on the line in his ignite: paper, socks, cards, dice... #oame2017 pic.twitter.com/SirhJ79AEY

— Jimmy Pai (@PaiMath) May 12, 2017

Be You by @PaiMath - Ignite at #oame2017 pic.twitter.com/BiIfHYqSkh

— Mary Bourassa (@MaryBourassa) May 12, 2017