Math Links for Week Ending Nov. 27th, 2015

I have started a new blog to house data that could be used to teach topics of data management and statistics. My hope is that every post will have at least one useable dataset along with what topic it could be used for and which courses as well. Sometimes I imagine they will be big posts other times probably just a set of data. These first few were a little on the large side but you can never have too much data.
The first post was about one of my favourite data sets for teaching why it is important to consider both numerical and graphical analysis. When studying Anscombe's Quartet you do all kinds of numerical analysis to find a bunch of data sets all have similar measures but when you look at them graphically they are radically different.
The second post is about the site Spurious Correlations. A site that scrapes the internet for data and then finds unrelated variables that are correlated with each other. The cool thing about the site is you can play with all the data sets to create your own set of unrelated variables that are correlated.
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U, MAP4C
http://found-data.blogspot.ca/2015/11/anscombes-quartet.html
http://found-data.blogspot.ca/2015/11/spurious-corrleations.html

If you use Google Docs a lot you might be interested in this post on four different add ons. Using formulas, equation editor, a graphing calculator and a CAS calculator.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2015/11/4-math-add-ons-for-google-docs.html


What is an Ontario Math Links these days without some sort of reference to Desmos? @mathycathy in conjunction with @mr_stadel have shown that you can do some work with transformations on Desmos using the activity builder. Reflections and Dilatations of shapes
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
http://www.mathycathy.com/blog/2015/11/desmos-activity-builder-not-to-be-missed/

And even more stuff on dilatations. This time from the guys at Sketchpad. They call them dilatation games where you are given challenges based on stretch factors. It's pretty neat and the challenges get more difficult as you continue through.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
http://blog.keycurriculum.com/dilation-games-assessment-thats-fun/

I think @mathletepearce may be gaining weight with all the chocolate bars he must have had to get rid of after this 3Act task on adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing with fractions (and Kit Kat bars). Lot's of videos along with KnowledgeHook quizzes.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
https://tapintoteenminds.com/3act-math/gimme-a-break/

The fight continues regarding traditional vs active math learning. @Mathletepearce chimes in with some research on the benefits of active learning
Curriculum Tags: All
https://tapintoteenminds.com/lecture-learning-vs-active-learning/

While I was creating my post on Spurious Correlations, I came across this TEDx talk on the dangers of correlation
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U, MAP4C
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8B271L3NtAw

@standupmaths has been putting out a lot of videos lately. This one is of a power puzzle. It's kind of neat and you could easily use it when introducing the idea of powers and having students verify any of the relations.
Curriculum Tags: Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5-pgBnGyzw

Ah yes. The proverbial "text message" question. So unrealistic any more, yet we keep asking it.
Curriculum Tags: MPM1D, MFM1P
https://twitter.com/ddmeyer/status/668919062697779200

In both plans, your teenager has bankrupted you by 8AM. pic.twitter.com/e31ogCJhnC

— Dan Meyer (@ddmeyer) November 23, 2015

And finally a very cool animated gif that would be an extension of the unit circle.
Curriculum Tags: MCR3U
https://twitter.com/solvemymaths/status/669650667238088704

Graphing Shapes https://t.co/8OKJ9LOPRo pic.twitter.com/viYPnmT13m

— solve my maths (@solvemymaths) November 25, 2015

Math Links for Week Ending Nov. 20th, 2015

 

I love real stories of data and statistics. Especially if those stories are well produced. In both grade 7&8 as well as grade 12 MDM4U and MAP4C students are to conduct and discuss surveys. This story is the back story of the now famous 2000 US presidential elections and how the final result basically came down to a recount in one county. One of the interesting parts is how poorly designed the ballot was and how it was easy to vote for Pat Buchannon instead of Al Gore without realizing it. And then the stats that seem to corroborate that that, in fact, happened. I think it's important for students to hear real stories like this to help show why we want the details of things like surveys are important for collecting good statistics.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MDM4U, MAP4C
http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/butterfly-effects/

I like this little lesson on sums of arithmetic series. It's not super elaborate but just a simple observation on starting the thinking about sums without getting too mathy (but then eventually getting mathy). I like the idea that it just starts in a way that is totally achievable for most and then gets more complex
Curriculum Tags: MCR3U
https://betterqs.wordpress.com/2015/10/29/opening-question/

As promised, Desmos was going to start taking those Activity Builder activities and cleaning them up and giving some extra polish. Their latest post highlights all of the current activities on Transformations (some that have previously been mentioned here) Check them all out at the link below (and then try them out on Desmos)
Curriculum Tags: MPM2D, MFM2P, MCR3U, MCF3M, MBF3C
http://blog.desmos.com/post/132423138557/activity-of-the-week-transformations

A couple of posts from 538 about movies. I love movies as a source of data. We all love them and there are so many sources where we can get data to show all kinds of things. The first is one that compares movies that were made from books and the books they were made from and then takes it a step further to talk about the outliers. It uses data from Rotten Tomatoes (for the movies) and Goodreads (for the books). A perfect example of data mining
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-20-most-extreme-cases-of-the-book-was-better-than-the-movie/

The second from 538 about movies is specifically about Sandra Bullock and her movies' ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and how much they grossed from The Numbers. Again great data mining and showing how to collect data from many sources to come up with a unique set of content.
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-three-types-of-sandra-bullock-movies/

The idea that we have to give kids a reason to need to do math has intrigued me recently. It could be @ddmeyer's "if ______ is the asperin, then we have to create the headache" analogy for this that started it off. Now @mrOrr_Geek has his own take on this with his hero's journey idea. That idea that students have to have that journey in order to be encouraged to do math. The good news is that we have so many tools now to help give that journey to them. Take a look at where they could be found here.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://mrorr-isageek.com/promote-struggle-a-heros-journey-in-math-class/

Guess what? Mathematics is like poetry. Duh
Curriculum Tags: All
http://poetrywithmathematics.blogspot.ca/2015/10/mathematics-and-poetry-are-similar.html

Hey, they found a connection between Pi and Quantum mechanics. Thanks to Mark Esping for this one.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://phys.org/news/2015-11-derivation-pi-links-quantum-physics.html
http://www.sciencealert.com/a-classic-formula-for-pi-has-been-discovered-hidden-in-hydrogen-atoms

I have always been quick to link math anxiety with poor math performance. But there seems to be research to suggest that that doesn't have to be the case. Read on
Curriculum Tags: All
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/11/151104124650.htm




I love that there is a history of just about all mathematics. Even statistical regression. Thanks @mathtans for pointing this out.
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U, MAP4C
http://priceonomics.com/the-discovery-of-statistical-regression/

7x13 = 28 via Lou Costello. Classic. They have done several versions of this math misconception. I hadn't seen this one before. Thanks to Phil Longpre for this one
Curriculum Tags: All
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS2aEfbEi7s

In general, I don't like to feature "teaching" videos but this one from @standupmaths is a follow up to one I featured a couple of weeks ago on the UK lottery. In this one he goes into more detail on factorial and combinatorics and how that relates to the lottery.
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lP58mP8Wchc

We talk about misleading graphs in Gr7, MBF3C, and MDM4U and often mention the idea of how by messing with the y axis of a graph you can make it very misleading. But this video does an interesting thing. It talks about why you actually might want to mess with the y axis and starts with a reference to one of my favourite books, How to Lie with Statistics. Thanks to Michael Bortalin for this one.
Curriculum: Gr7, MBF3C, MDM4U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14VYnFhBKcY

There are many examples of these but you can never have enough. That is, the dreaded percent of a percent discount
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
https://twitter.com/stwillott/status/665956957161971712/photo/1

Hey, Kate Spade, why not just say 60% off? #mathchat pic.twitter.com/SoT8oyGJhd

— Steven Willott (@stwillott) November 15, 2015

Math Links for Week Ending Nov. 13, 2015

Seriously, my love fest with Desmos continues. Check this out. You may have seen images like the one of the propellor seen here before where the actual propellor looks like it exploded. Well thanks to this Desmos sketch we now know exactly it happens. It's due to the way the digital shutter works on a camera. It sweeps from one side to the other (or top to bottom) tracing out what ever is moving. There is definitely some advance function and polar coordinate action happening on this one. And you could probably definitely connect some related rates with calculus too. Make sure you look at the actual Desmos sketch too. You can adjust sliders for the speed of the propellor and shutter and there are other examples on the page below that shows what happens with different shaped propellors.
Curriculum Tags: MHF4U, MCV4U
https://imgur.com/gallery/RG7Kd

Over the last couple of years @marybourassa has been giving her daily routine for her grade 10 applied course. This semester she is doing the same with her Grade 10 academic course and along the way she is creating new stuff and using old stuff. Like this matching activity for trig and similar triangles. She is at Day 45 right now. Half way through the semester. Check out all of her grade 10 academic posts here.
Curriculum Tags: MPM2D
http://marybourassa.blogspot.ca/2015/11/mpm2d-day-42-similar-triangles-and-trig.html

Here is a neat couple of posts from @jreulbach that introduce the idea of logarithms by starting with the zombie apocalypse and creates a need to have a logarithm. Then it follows up with a second post that does the actual introduction to logs. And of course it uses, you guessed it, Desmos.
Curriculum Tags: MHF4U
http://ispeakmath.org/2015/11/07/creating-a-need-for-logarithms-with-zombies/
http://ispeakmath.org/2015/11/07/inverse-functions-and-logarithms/

Not everything @marybourassa is doing is about grade 10 advance math. In this post she has a Desmos Activity Builder activity on logarithmic transformations. All hail Desmos
Curriculum Tags: MHF4U
http://marybourassa.blogspot.ca/2015/11/log-transformations-desmos-activity.html

And the Desmos activities keep coming. Here's another post from @jreulbach. This time on transformations and includes both paper and pencil and four separate Desmos Activity Builder activities.
Curriculum Tags: MPM2D, MCR3U, MCF3M
http://ispeakmath.org/2015/10/28/algebra-2-transformations-unit-starring-desmos-teacher-activities/







Another example of the #MTBoS in action. @fawnpnguyen visualpatterns.org is a legitimate hit and based on that @samjshah had his students create funky 3D patterns with cubes to connect to arithmetic and geometric series and sequences.
Curriculum Tags: MCR3U
http://samjshah.com/2015/11/05/playing-with-blocks-three-dimensional-visual-sequences/

And another one from @samjshah starts out seeming very innocent: "At 3:00, the hour and minute hands on a clock form a right angle. What is the next time that happens?" Then he then goes on to solve it using the dot product of vectors using functions over time. Nice
Curriculum Tags: MCV4U
http://samjshah.com/2015/11/06/clock-puzzle/

I love how @paul_math takes the idea of quotes that keep you going as a teacher and then shows this quote  

"Put bluntly, learning based purely on procedural methods has little meaning or long term retention for most students, and does not facilitate the depth of understanding needed to use math for any worthwhile endeavor outside (or inside) of school. Even more bluntly, its boring, demeaning, and encourages the all-too-prevalent perception that mathematics is difficult, useless and unintelligible."

And then he brings it around to talking about the OAME. Nicely done
Curriculum Tags: All
http://mathsoxlearner.blogspot.ca/2015/10/my-comfort-quote-im-pretty-sure-im-not.html

And kind of along the lines of that quote is a neat math fight going on on @ddmeyer 's blog. Pick a side: Understanding Math vs Explaining Answers. Interesting to see how divided some are on this.

Curriculum Tags: All
http://blog.mrmeyer.com/2015/understanding-math-v-explaining-answers/

It is always good to try to find connections for all our students and some of our female students are dreamers about weddings. So why not give them some fun graphs about wedding planning?
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qSN_hzNafc

Some fun math in a 5 minute package from @standupmaths. I love the tiny proof that all roots of 2 are rational and how that is connected to Fermat's Last Theorem. And then the crazy sequence proof dealing with primes. Though these are specific topics I think they could connect to just about any math class.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1OkVkq2vFM

I'm always looking for interesting data to analyze. Here is a fun graph on the popularity of actor Shia LaBeouf. Have your kids do some inferencing on this
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8

A quick one from @marybourassa. Can't get enough Pythagorean humour
Curriculum Tags: Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P, MPM2P, MPM2D
http://marybourassa.blogspot.ca/2015/10/mpm2d-day-24-cycle-1-review.html

Math Links for Week Ending Nov. 6th, 2015

I found myself looking at the Desmos Team page this week and each member has a link to their favourite graph (seriously, who doesn't have a favourite graph?) and came across this fav of @Zora_Tung. It was created by the founder and CEO of Desmos @Eluberoff so it shouldn't be surprising that it is probably one of the slickest uses of Desmos that I have seen. You enter any function and then drag points to visually show the slope of the tangent at those x values. The slickest part is when you have all the slopes at places where they are close enough to the actual slopes, the derivative actually appears (if your curious, the mechanics of that is pretty cool to - take a look when you open the graph) and if you want have a little more control then you can look at this version.
Curriculum Tags: MCV4U, MHF4U
https://www.desmos.com/calculator/a9qu2gphzj

I had a fun time Sunday morning helping out @mjfenton to tweak this activity (my daughter helped too). A nice little Desmos Activity Builder number that starts with a couple of screens from a running app and then you do some great work with proportional reasoning and direct variations. Curriculum Tags: MPM1D, MFM1P
https://teacher.desmos.com/....../5633efcb40b89698065df55a






And while we are on the Desmos band wagon we have this great fun site from @Lustomatical He used to work at Mathalicious and they use the Desmos API there as the backbone for their site. And on his site http://chrislusto.com/ he has a bunch of tutorials on how to use the Desmos API on your own site (damn, now I have something else to learn about). So here is one of the things he made. It turns any sequence of Desmos screens into an animated gif (like this one I made here). Try it out at the link below and try one on your own.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://www.gifsmos.com/

Here is a neat activity from @mrOrr_Geek that he adapted from @bobloch on angular velocity. I really love the marching in a line and spinning parts and it also reminded me of a video that I shot and posted on 101qs.com where I like asking the question "how fast are the tips of the blades moving" (spoiler alert - really fast). But back to the post. It's a nice full lesson that starts with a nice little video to set the stage and gets kids out of their seats and outside to get a real feel for angular velocity.
Curriculum Tags: MHF4U
http://mrorr-isageek.com/angular-velocity-trig-whips-elmo/
http://mathcoachblog.com/2012/10/02/experiencing-linear-and-angular-velocity/
http://www.101qs.com/1052-blowin-in-the-wind

And those problems continue to be posted on the Interwebs. That is, "the question that stumped ......" This time it is Australian students. The gist of the post is about how people were complaining about how dumb would you have to be to not get this but if you did not remember your angle properties, it would be a bit tough. It's a really nice little problem though.
Curriculum Tags: MPM1D, MFM1P
http://www.independent.co.uk/student/news/vce-further-mathematics-50-cent-question-leaves-australian-students-confused-a6719231.html

I think that dealing with disappointment as a teacher is probably a day to day thing. This post from @tina_zita reminds us that we have to turn disappointment into an opportunity to learn. It also reminds me of me of this short clip from Dylan Wiliam
Curriculum Tags: All
https://misszita.wordpress.com/2015/11/07/dealing-with-disappointment/

Last week I featured a post from @MrSoClassroom about what it means to be a teacher and this week he followed it up with a great post that is about the concept of sharing. A perfect post for the #MTBoS community who shares so much. Plus he gave me and this blog some props
Curriculum Tags: All
http://mrsoclassroom.blogspot.ca/2015/11/are-we-reluctant-to-share.html

I love this TED talk about using different perspectives in math. My favourite part is when he deals with 4/3. Thanks to @mathletepearce for this one
Curriculum Tags: All
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lv9QDjw8GJk

And another one from the TEDx stage is less about Math and more about STEM but the title should get you interested "I don't do math". Which basically starts out with the concept that people are willing to say they can't do math but not that they can't read. And then goes on to explain why it is important to think scientifically.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y44nqo11Fh0

Like I said I was on the Desmos Team page and this was @ddmeyer 's favourite graph (from XKCD). Though I didn't agree with the placement of some of the fruit. I do like the concept for an interesting way to introduce the coordinate system.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/fuck_grapefruit.png

We see these kinds of posts all the time on Facebook and seem outrageous but just a little fact checking can show that it is not possible. The good thing is that many of the comments debunk it pretty quickly. Try to debunk it yourself (or have your students do it) and then compare with what others have said. It's a really good exercise in dealing with large numbers too.
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
 https://www.facebook.com/OccupyWallSt/photos/a.187967227937716.47329.184749301592842/1018006514933779/?type=3&theater