Math Links for Week Ending July 29th, 2016

Here is a pretty neat and simple little game from @joelbezaire that deals with order of operations, dealing with variables, equations and problem solving. It's got a very low set up and seems like it has a low enough floor that most kids would be able to participate. The premiss is this. You are given a certain number of variables and a few rows of values representing those variables. The point of the game is for students to guess how the numbers are related to each other. That is a really simple explanation. Take the time to watch the tutorial video and you will probably add this to your classroom repertoire. And one of the nice things is that there are already some premade "games" ready on the website. Take a look. Thanks to @marybourassa for this one.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P
https://variableanalysisgame.wordpress.com/

Hey, it's a definite phenomenon. Pokemon Go, that is. So I did some quick analysis of the points required to level up. It turns out that those points follow an exponential pattern but along the way have some quadratic and linear sections. So if you are looking for some data to analyze that might be of interest to students take a look here.
Curriculum Tags: MPM1D, MFM1P, MPM2D, MFM2P, MCR3U, MCF3M, MBF3C, MAP4C, MCT4C, MDM4U, MHF4U
http://found-data.blogspot.ca/2016/07/is-levelling-up-in-pokemon-go.html

Hey, if you want to bring some geometry into Pokemon Go, then try this property of circles. This particular property actually doesn't show up in Ontario curriculum anymore but it still might be fun for just about any class.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://nerdist.com/the-science-and-math-behind-pokemon-go/

This is a new math worksheet builder from @altekrusejason. You may or may not have strong opinions about "worksheets" but one thing that has always been true is that creating a math worksheet with graphs and equations wasn't always easy. It looks like this might be the answer for that. Watch the video below to get a small sense of what you can do. Thanks to @SWOTeacher for this one
Curriculum Tags: All
http://jaltekruse.github.io/OpenNotebook/

Some brain imaging research on the stages of problem solving, specifically when doing math. Learning more about this could help struggling learners.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2016/july/problem-solving-stages.html


How old is the worlds oldest calculator? Maybe 60 BC
Curriculum Tags: All
https://theconversation.com/what-the-worlds-oldest-calculator-tells-us-about-the-ancient-greeks-view-of-the-universe-62234

Have you ever wondered how many possible YouTube videos there could possibly be? Spoiler alert. It's a lot. Some good number sense with big numbers here from @standupmaths.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VW6LYuli7VU

I do love quadratic based images like this one from @RobbieMaddison jumping the Corinth Chasm. I have more from the quadratic realm here if you are interested.
Curriculum Tags: MPM2D, MFM2P, MCR3U, MCF3M, MBF3C
https://sites.google.com/site/wecdsbdi/numeracy-support/grade-10-applied-math-resources/unit-6-quadratic-equations/quadratic-images

Taking pictures from a helicopter reveal all kinds of symmetry in New York and LA. Click on the link for more images
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
http://www.lostateminor.com/2016/07/29/aerial-photos-of-nyc-and-la-reveal-symmetry-hiding-in-plain-sight/

Stuyvesant town housing. NYC. #nyc #stuyvesant #aerialphotography

A photo posted by Jeffrey Milstein (@jeffreymilstein) on May 5, 2016 at 11:14pm PDT

Math Links for Week Ending July 22nd, 2016

This is a kind of fun site. Some math games that reach different strands. I like Square It but I think Factors and Multiples Chain might be my favourite. Here you choose numbers from 1-100 and try to create chains of numbers that are either factors or divisors of each other. Good practice for factoring. There are more than these two so take a look.
Curriculum Tags:All
http://wild.maths.org/

Of course, now that Desmos has their Card Sort feature, there are some good ones being produced by the math community. Like this one, for example, from @mathycathy about sorting statements about real and rational numbers. It's short and sweet and it starts to show some of the different ways you can do sorts with this new Desmos feature.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8 https://teacher.desmos.com/activitybuilder/custom/578a36ac0912cdc123cdb4d2#

Is it true that women might steer away from science careers because of difficulties with science? Check this article out to see what the data says
Curriculum Tags: All
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/07/14/calculus-apprehensions-may-steer-women-away-from-science-careers/

It's always good to have more fun examples of projectile motion. And with a video title like "Human Slingshot - BASE Catapult | 0-200kph in 1 second" that means the analysis from @rjallain (see the link) will be pretty good.
Curriculum Tags: MPM2D, MFM2P, MCR3U, MCF3M, MBF3C
http://www.wired.com/2016/07/giant-human-slingshot/

I love this one from @standupmaths where he shows that the current Euro 2016 soccer ball is actually based on a cube. Some cool 3D tessellation here.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwWBpjeyRS0

It's always good to see math show up in real life, though this might be a bit of some "bad press". Still, there might be a lesson on percent that could be wrapped around this image from @mburnsmath.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P, MAT1L, MAT2L
https://twitter.com/mburnsmath/status/753330075815194625

Restaurant tip help sent to me by @dockterman with a "Grrr...math is hard" message. We have our work cut out for us. pic.twitter.com/gswphwQ3ql

— Marilyn Burns (@mburnsmath) July 13, 2016

Math Links for Week Ending July 15th, 2016

OK so the secret is out. If you were at #Descon16, that is. That was the pre Twitter Math Camp conference put on by @Desmos and it seems like they have sneakily released some new features ( I wasn't actually there but I'll leave it to you to figure out how I found out). First of all Teacher.Desmos.com has a new look and now they have created "Bundles" of activities.  But more importantly they have a couple of new Activity Builder features that are part of their "Labs" section. Firstly, you can now apparently, create your own MarbleSlides activities. And my new favourite, they have a new Card Sort activity builder. If you've ever done a card sort activity, now you can do one without actually making cards. See the video below and this quick repository of some card sorts made at #DesCon16 this year. I'm sure that @Desmos will have some blog posts about them soon but for now you can turn on Labs by login in and then clicking on your name, then click on Labs. Thanks to @marybourassa and @MrSurti for pointing me in the right direction.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://teacher.desmos.com/labs
http://blog.desmos.com/post/147457148184/friday-five-for-july-15

Need an interesting modelling data for exponential functions? How about Harry Potter. If you saw the scene where the gold cups kept multiplying every time they were moved then you may be familiar with it. He asks the question "How long would it take for the room to fill up? " and you can get all the analysis and goods from @rjallain at the link below
Curriculum Tags: MCR3U, MCT4C, MHF4U, MAP4C
http://www.wired.com/2016/07/heres-just-long-treasure-trap-harry-potter-take-kill/

Some thoughts on why we should teach math and why everyone can do it.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/06/the-math-myth/485852/

Some great fun with consecutive coin flips from @numberphile. These are great conversations to have with students about probability
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MBF3C, MDM4U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDw2Pu0-H4g

Kudos to these kids who not only parodied a song (Weezer's My Name is Jonas) but played the song themselves too.
Curriculum Tags: MCV4U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFki7IkvAtA

Geometry and Pole Dancing meet. Why not?
Curriculum Tags: All
https://vimeo.com/159800107

I always liked the pseudo graphs that they create on Indexed from @jessicahagy. They are great for helping kids to decide what graphs mean in a fun way.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P
http://thisisindexed.com/2016/06/how-to-torture-people/

Math Links for Week Ending July 8th, 2016

I've done and update on our Pythagorean Area activity so that it now includes an Explain Everything version. The premiss of this activity is that students are given sets of squares and asked to create triangles using the sides of the squares. Some of the sets will produce right triangles and they are supposed to notice that the sum of the areas of the smaller square equals the area of the larger one. The original activity is done as a hands on activity but now, if you have iPads, you can do it entirely using Explain Everything.
Curriculum Tags: Gr8, MFM1P, MPM1D

Here's a cool resource: Unsolved K-12 was a conference in Banff that looked for famous problems in mathematics that could be linked to each of the K-12 grades. Watch the intro video, below, and this slideshow and then go to the website to check out all of the cool problems. Thanks to @ddmeyer for this one and don't miss his blog post about it (incuding the comments) for even more great links.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://mathpickle.com/unsolved-k-12/

I love this essay from @jamestanton on why we factor quadratics (spoiler alert: he doesn't think it's important). And as much as I am a fan of quadratics (especially the quadratic formula - that's another story), I am totally with him. I will go even further, most of the stuff we teach is not needed. It's just stuff. So read on.
Curriculum Tags: MPM2D, MFM2P, MCF3M, MBF3C, MCR3U
http://www.jamestanton.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Curriculum-Essay_July-2016_Factoring-Trinomials.pdf

Do you wanna have fun with factoring? Then why not discuss highly composite numbers with this video from @numberphile
Curriclum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JM2oImb9Qg

I love this animated gif that shows with the same perimeter you can have different areas.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P
https://twitter.com/mathemaniac/status/749770285495095296

You can slide the edges of a rectilinear shape such that the perimeter stays the same while the area is changing. pic.twitter.com/enHHivv5fJ

— Simon Pampena (@mathemaniac) July 4, 2016

Yes this is American data but it still might be of interest to your students. Which states take the most selfies while driving. The data was gathered from Instagram by looking at hashtags. Even if it just to discuss the idea of collecting data from social media sites like Instagram, Twitter etc then I think this is worth it.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MBF3C, MDM4U
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/29/these-states-take-the-most-drivingselfies-and-they-need-to-stop/

Some fun stuff from @BenOrlin where he draws about what students see when they look at algebra. Check the post out to see them all
Curriculum Tags: All
https://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2016/06/22/what-students-see-when-they-look-at-algebra/

Math Links for Week Ending July 1st, 2016

A few from @mathequalslove. I like this puzzle for functions where the simple premiss is that for each card you place integers from -4 to +4 to make the statements true. The other one is for dealing with whether a relation is a function or not by placing the integers from -4 to +4 too. These take some time to make up so I love it when people share their activities so that we can save that time ourselves. Nicely done.
Curriculum Tags: MCR3U, MCF3M
http://mathequalslove.blogspot.ca/2016/06/evaluating-functions-puzzles-open.html
http://mathequalslove.blogspot.ca/2016/06/functionnot-function-open-middle-problem.html

The first time I heard of Happy Numbers was in the book "Adam Spencer's Big Book of Numbers". in this task, @MarkChubb3 uses the concept of happy numbers to have students practice perfect squares.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
https://buildingmathematicians.wordpress..../happy-numbers/







If you ever want to give students an example of the dangers of exponential growth then this story of a hacker who's "worm" inadvertently shut down the most popular site on the Internet (at the time) and did so because it grew exponentially. Listen to his story (starting at 1:19:17 ) on how he shut down MySpace (this was clearly a while ago) and how it eventually got him banned from using computers. @SamyKamkar is a hacker and he is being interviewed by venture capitalist and self experimenter @tferriss. It's a great (and long) podcast but the story in question starts at 1:19:17. Have a listen.
Curriculum Tags: MCF3M, MCR3U, MBF3C
http://fourhourworkweek.com/2015/05/02/samy-kamkar/

Some new activities pointed out on the @Desmos Friday Five. A few from the last few weeks that I liked were Put the Point on the Line which gives a nice intuitive way to introduce the idea of slope a neat little scatter plot activity called Commuting Times that includes a Which One Doesn't Belong at the end. I also like Parabola Slalom which makes good use of the new sketch feature. And on today's Friday Five there are a bunch of previously shown activities all dealing with parabolas, like Match my Parabola or Will it Hit the Hoop.
Curriculum Tags: MFM1P, MPM1D, MPM2D, MFM2P, MCR3U, MCF3M, MBF3C, MDM4U, MAP4C
http://blog.desmos.com/post/146081323386/friday-five-for-june-17
http://blog.desmos.com/post/146425856530/friday-five-for-june-24
http://blog.desmos.com/post/146753569437/friday-five-for-july-1

This is older but still quite relevant to 3D point plotting. I think it's could be a nice application of 3D vectors.
Curriculum Tags: MCV4U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVhVClFMg6Y

Who doesn't like geometry in nature. Thanks to @KMarkPet for this one
Curriculum Tags: All
http://timewheel.net/image-25-stunning-photographs-of-sacred-geometry-and-fractals-in/