Math Links for Week Ending Jan. 15, 2016

"I witnessed more risk-taking from my students, more passion for learning, creativity, and a more active math talk community." - Amy Lin

That is what @amylin1962 concluded when she stopped giving out marks in her grade 9 math class this year. I really like the idea of no marks but recognize that it's a very gutsy move. Giving marks is so ingrained into the educational framework, that it takes extreme conviction and understanding of assessment to pull it off. But based on her story it seems like she is well on her way. The research says that if we look at the three choices of giving marks alone, giving marks and written comments or just giving comments, there is no added benefit for students if you give marks and comments (they often ignore the comments and focus on the marks) but if you only give comments then that does the most in moving students forward in their thinking. And if that is truly our goal, to move student thinking forward then trying what Amy did this year is a step in the right direction. Read about her journey and how she had her students come up with their own grades at the link below.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://amylin.me/2016/01/10/good-to-grade-less/

Forget that it's a new way to slice a pizza. Instead consider the very cool tessellation that occurs here. I think it's a really neat way to show that you can do tiling with complex shapes. Thanks to @mathletepearce and Michael Lieff for this one.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
http://gizmodo.com/mathematicians-have-found-crazy-new-ways-to-cut-pizza-i-1751776752

Again, the fun and power of Twitter is shown when @marybourassa tweets about a question dealing with the ambiguous case. Then Twitter responds including @mikeandallie (if you haven't seen his videos on doing math with his kids then you are missing out). He finds a connection to a theorem dealing with angle bisectors. So Fun.
Curriculum Tags: MCR3U
https://mikesmathpage.wordpress.com/2016/01/09/a-fun-connection-with-mary-bourassas-problem/

I love when you can show the power of data in places you might not expect. In this case it's farming. For the average person, the amount of data that is used in current farming practices would be surprising but when I ask my farmer friends about it they say that using data is old news. None the less this is a great snapshot on how data is used in modern farming. "You can taste the algorithms" Listen at the link below
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/can-you-taste-the-algorithm-in-this-arugula/

I made a quick post on a fun data set for making bar or circle graphs about the types of new Star Wars toys. I think this is a good set to help show why bar graphs are better than circle graphs.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MDM4U
http://found-data.blogspot.ca/2016/01/where-are-rey-star-wars-toys.html



It is EQAO season and that means that teachers are looking for different ways to have their students practice. A relatively new online service (mentioned here before) called @KnowledgeHook has a big advocate in @mathletepearce. In this recent post he points out their EQAO practice online quiz gameshow. Something worth a look if you are looking for more interactive ways to practice for EQAO.
Curriculum Tags: MPM1D, MFM1P
https://tapintoteenminds.com/9-eqao-math-gameshow-practice/

I have asked myself this question many times. Why on earth are TI-84 graphing calculators so expensive. Read on to find out a possible reason.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://mic.com/articles/125829/your-old-texas-instruments-graphing-calculator-still-costs-a-fortune-heres-why#.YjLq4SBVe

Why the TI-84 costs so much. via @smiller229 #GetRidOfTheDinasour #mathchat @desmos https://t.co/2APk1QwYlP

— David Sladkey (@dsladkey) January 13, 2016

I really like this "Day in the Life" of a teacher of math students with learning disabilities from @crstn85. We all know that teaching is a busy job but trying to accommodate students with LDs makes things that much tougher.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://drawingonmath.blogspot.ca/2016/01/a-day-in-life-teaching-math-to-students.html

This reminded me of Calculus the Musical. Thanks to Michele Cooper for this one.
Curriculum Tags: MCV4U
http://www.teachertube.com/video/calculus-rhapsody-178211

It's always good to be made aware of examples of misleading statistics. And I particularly love those that show this particular paradox with taking averages and percents. And because this is a TED-Ed video it is nice and short and has support material with it.
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
http://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-statistics-can-be-misleading-mark-liddell

I have long said that kickers have become integral parts of professional football teams. It seems the data backs that up. In particular I love the idea of sending kickers from today back in time to play to see how effective they could be. This graph shows it but check the link out for more evidence to convince your football loving friends.
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/kickers-are-forever/

Do you have kids that are into popular music? Then this post from @fivethirtyeight might be for them. It compares Nicki Minaj and Drake. More specifically how including them as a guest on your song might help that song's popularity. That is, which is bigger, the Drake Effect or the Nicki Effect. Spoiler alert, they conclude having Nicki on your track is better. But there is a lot of data here to help compare the two situations so if you are looking for kids to do some inferencing on graphs then this post might be an interesting way to do it. Caution, however, not surprisingly both of them have played on songs with expletives in their titles. Some are mentioned in this post. Because of that you might want to limit this to older students.
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/drake-effect-nick-minaj/