Math Links for Week Ending Oct. 7th, 2016

 Flipping Bottles!! The summer's fad was Pokemon Go! and now it seems to be flipping bottles. First @ddmeyer has a false start with a 3Act task attempt but then bails on it and asks for suggestions on how to make a useful math task out of it. In the comments, the best suggestions (IMHO) were those that were about experimenting with the bottle fill level and success rate. And then he comes back with the data to show that's the way to go. Then @MrOrr_Geek takes a similar tack and has his students starting with guesses as to the optimum bottle level and eventually get to using volume and rates to predict the number of successes given a certain amount of bottle flipping time. He makes a game of it and the kids are flipping out.
Curriculum Tags: MFM1P, MPM1D, MDM4U, MAP4C
http://blog.mrmeyer.com/2016/bottleflipping-the-lessons-you-throw-back/
http://blog.mrmeyer.com/2016/i-was-wrong-about-bottleflipping/
http://mrorr-isageek.com/flippity-flip-bottle-flip/

The folks at @desmos have been hard at work adding layers to their activities and teasing some of them out on the Twitters. They've just released one of these activities. In Ontario we don't do much with inequalities (a little in MHF4U) but this is a really nice little way to get kids to understand the idea behind the in a game like format.
Curriculum Tags: MHF4U
http://blog.desmos.com/post/151486647157/friday-fave-for-october-7

There is never enough work that we can do with rates with students. In this post @robertkaplinsky combines buying in bulk and coupons to have student working out the deal that they think is the best with these carrots.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8 MPM1D, MFM1P
http://robertkaplinsky.com/work/carrots/




@mathycathy keeps pushing out the Desmos activities. This time by combining a Which One Doesn't Belong and a Card Sort in dealing with linear equations. I like the fact that these are not very long and would be used to look at a very precise thing then letting you, presumably, move on.
Curriculum Tags: MPM1D, MFM1P
https://teacher.desmos.com/activitybuilder/custom/57f14a21ecf372e4050ae1fc#

I like hands on activities for students to do when they are learning a new concept and in grade 10 students are supposed to explore the development of trig ratios. So the place to start is with similar triangles. In this activity @Wheeler_Laura does some hands on coupled with some Pear Deck work. Check out all the downloads on her post.
Curriculum Tags: MPM2D, MFM2P
https://mslwheeler.wordpress.com/2016/09/24/similar-triangle-intro-mfm2p/

 Giving students the means to do better in math can be elusive. So it means we may need to try different things. In this case, it's by teaching kids empathy
Curriculum Tags: All
http://www.csmonitor.com/EqualEd/2016/1005/Louisville-s-experiment-Can-teaching-empathy-boost-math-scores

OK, so I know this isn't a video but it's a podcast on collection of data on bears in the wild. I thought it was interesting how the mechanics are all done and how the data is used. Listen here
Curriculum Tags: MBF3C, MDM4U, MAP4C
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-secret-to-tracking-and-mapping-bears/

When you are looking at data it's always good to show students stuff that might be interesting to them and stuff that might be analyzed in an interesting way. At Five Thirty Eight they often analyze Movie data by groupings. In this case, the four types of Marky Mark films
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U, MAP4C
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-four-types-of-mark-wahlberg-movies/