Math Links for Week Ending June 12th, 2015

I like the stuff that @MrOrr_Geek has been doing with Explain Everything. His latest offering is a full lesson on parallel lines that starts with a video, has kids outside with chalk and then wraps up with a mini discovery type lesson on Explain Everything. When you go to his site you will see links to the intro video, sample student work and the downloadable Explain Everything activity file. If your kids have iPads then this is a great way to look at parallel lines.
Curriculum Tags: Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P
http://mrorr-isageek.com/make-it-parallel-an-activity-with-parallel-lines/

I love this trigonometry matching activity from @marybourassa at the M3 blog. In short there are three sheets. One with triangles that have basic trig questions. The next three pages are one sheet of word problems, diagrams and answers that students have to match up based on the information given. This could easily be used when introducing trig for the first time in grade 10 or as a review in grade 11.
Curriculum Tags: MFM2P, MPM2D, MCR3U, MCF3M, MBF3C
http://marybourassa.blogspot.ca/2015/05/mfm2p-day-67-trig-matching.html



Games are a good way of tricking students to do math. In this case the math is order of operations. Students are given sets of 4 numbers and the object is to put them together to create the number 24 as the answer.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P
http://mathequalslove.blogspot.ca/2015/05/stuff-worth-sharing-game-of-24.html






I am intrigued by the idea of an Interactive Note Book and on the Math = Love blog Sarah uses them a lot and I like some of the stuff within. Take for example this simple foldable that helps to identify the domain and range of a function.
Curriculum Tags: MCR3U, MCF3M, MHF4U
http://mathequalslove.blogspot.ca/2015/05/algebra-2-unit-1-inb-pages-2014-2015.html
http://mathequalslove.blogspot.ca/2015/06/algebra-2-interactive-notebook-pages.html

Another one from Math = Love. This time a compilation of found I Have, Who Has cards. A range of topics that you could fit into any course from grade 7 to grade 12. Take a look
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P, MAT2L, MPM2D, MFM2P, MCR3U, MCF3M, MBF3C, MAP4C, MCT4C, MHF4U
http://mathequalslove.blogspot.ca/2015/05/i-havewho-has-complilation.html



This is a simple app that relates to the relationship between the income of a family and whether the kids go to college. The nice thing about this is that it has you guess what the relationship is, then it shows you the answer and then it shows you a heat map of where everyone else has guessed. Good for any course that deals with linear scatter plots.
Curriculum Tags: MFM1P, MPM1D, MDM4U, MAP4C
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/05/28/upshot/you-draw-it-how-family-income-affects-childrens-college-chances.html

I have mixed feelings about Kahoot. This is a game that you play with your students where MC questions are put up and students choose the correct answer on their device. They get points for choosing the correct answer and the number of points they get is inversely proportional to how long it takes them to answer (you might have played a similar trivia game in a bar). Now I like the competitive nature of this type of thing when it comes me but in a math class, with students, as soon as you put a time limit on questions, the best students probably love it but many students who struggle find that timer something that raises anxiety. So I have pretty much stayed away from this. But @mathycathy has turned me onto a feature that might make me rethink it. That is what they call ghost mode. In this case, you get to redo the same quiz and try to do better than you did before. There are some interesting applications of this on the Kahoots website here and you can see what Cathy has to say at the link below (including links to some of her own quizzes).
Curriculum Tags: All
http://www.mathycathy.com/blog/2015/05/kahoot-ghost-mode/

I have loved all the stories I have heard about Paul Erdos. This guy loved math so much that it was literally all he did. He didn't own a house but instead just bunked in the homes of professors and other mathematicians. Well here is a children's book on his life during which he collaborated on over 500 papers. So many that there is a "club" that measures how closely you are related to Erdos by how many degrees of separation you are away from having worked directly with him. If you worked with him then your Erdos number is one. If you worked with someone who worked with Erdos then your number is 2 etc. And if you are really fanatical you might consider the idea of a Erdos-Bacon number.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/06/02/the-boy-who-loved-paul-erdos/

Using "tricks" to do math is slowly becoming a bit taboo as it doesn't promote conceptual understanding as well and favours memorization instead. Here's an article on "13 Rules that Expire" that is along the same line from the NCTM. Thanks to @mathletepearce for this one. For an online community that has also done work on this, try http://nixthetricks.com/
Curriculum Tags: All
http://www.nctm.org/Publications/teaching-children-mathematics/2014/Vol21/Issue1/tcm2014-08-18a_pdf/

Here is a fun video from @joshsundquist. Another in the ".... for math nerds" series.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MBF3C, MAP4C, MDM4U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3VDjQJSMJ0

This one from @numberphile is kind of interesting (though you might not think it was). It's on how we read numbers. That is, the physical way we read numbers and what happens in our brains.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7E-pBWuSIA

Who said there isn't any money in writing textbooks. Check out the multimillion dollar home of the recently deceased James Stewart. He made his millions from writing calculus textbooks for universities and colleges. His house is up for sale now which he called the Integral House. Check out the images below and see how the house relates to math and read about the story before he died here. Thanks to Michele Cooper for this one.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/04/travel/curve-house-23-million-integral-toronto/index.html