Math Links for Week Ending Mar. 6th, 2015

I have really liked the work that Robert Kaplinsky does. Especially his videos depicting student thinking. The latest ones deal with the concept of deep understanding. The idea that students might have a working mechanical knowledge of math but when things go a little differently from the norm, misconceptions reveal themselves. Here he first asks students to calculate the perimeter and area of a rectangle. These are grade 8 students that should easily be able to do this and as the videos show, they can. But the important part comes when he asks the follow up question "List the dimensions of a rectangle with perimeter 24 units? ". Students then struggle. So the conversation is about what it means for a student to have a deep critical understanding of a concept (and that just having students mechanically doing math is not good enough). Check out the whole post here.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://robertkaplinsky.com/why-depth-of-knowledge-is-critical-to-implement/

Kyle at the Tap Into Teen Minds blog is putting on a Webinar on the 4-part math lesson on March 9th at 7:30PM. Check out the info here. Hopefully you will see this before then.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://tapintoteenminds.com/2015/03/02/join-march-9th-free-otf-connect-webinar/

A few weeks ago I mentioned Michael Fenton's Match My Line/Parabola Desmos activities. He has an updated post on the match my line version with samples of student work and different versions (including a paper & pencil version). Even though it's the same activity, I like it so much I thought I would mention it again. The focus here is how to create your own versions.
Curriculum Tags: MPM1D, MFM2P
http://reasonandwonder.com/match-my-line-%E2%80%A2-create-your-own/


More work from Michael Fenton. This time using one of my other favourite resources, visualpatterns.org. It's a neat workflow for students to start with the first three terms of the pattern and work towards the equation of the relation, using paper and pencil, a foldable and Desmos in between. This same workflow could be modified slightly for grade 7&8 students by just removing the equation component.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM2P
http://reasonandwonder.com/visual-patterns-desmos-amazing/


I like this one from Jon Orr asking whether Lego are gender biased. It's a big activity. Students have to collect data (from the web) about various Lego sets, their number of pieces and cost (from various themes - Starwars, Disney etc). Then they calculate the unit rates, graph the data and then try to answer the question about gender bias. Take a look
Curriculum Tags: MPM1D, MFM1P, MDM4U, MAP4C
http://mrorr-isageek.com/?p=3736

I know it's not Pi Day yet. But this year's Pi Day is a one-in-a-century event 3-14-15 at 9:26:53 won't happen again until another 100 years has passed. So here's a link to my Pi Day Pinterest board (which I will probably post again next week)
Curriculum Tags: All
https://www.pinterest.com/davidpetro314/pi-day/

One last one from Michael Fenton. He did an Ignite session on using technology that is pretty good. These sessions are becoming more popular. 5min, 20slides 15seconds each. I did one of these last year at OAME and will doing one again this year. So I am a bit partial to good ones.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://reasonandwonder.com/ignite-talk-video-%E2%80%A2-technology-and-the-curious-mind/

I haven't featured anything from the 538 blog in a while. So here are a couple. The first one is a neat data set exploring the relationship between a TV show and its spin off. That is, whether the number of episodes that a series has is connected to the number of episodes its spinoff has. Perfect for doing everything from having students interpret the meaning of points on a scatter plot. It's not so great for something like a line of best fit (unless you want to talk about something with no relationship) but still interesting.
Curriculum Tags: Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P, MDM4U, MAP4C
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-long-can-a-spinoff-like-better-call-saul-last/

Though technically not from 538, this was pointed out on their site. This neat analysis of student responses on multiple choice tests to determine whether they have cheated. Students results were paired up and when they got the same answers for each question. The results were the graph seen below. Can you pick out the cheaters. Spoiler alert, the line represents a perfect match for two tests.
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
http://flowingdata.com/2015/02/25/identifying-cheaters-in-test-results-a-simple-method/