Math Links for Week Ending Feb. 9th, 2018

I think it's important for us math teachers to know that the game has changed and I think this post from @ProfKeithDevlin really gives away a lot of the reasons. The title seems pretty innocuous: "How today’s pros solve math problems". What follows is the revelation that much of what we teach in school is useless due to the technologies we have at our finger tips:

"These days, that smartphone in your pocket has access to cost-free cloud resources that can execute any mathematical procedure you need. What’s more, it will do it with a dataset of any real-world size, with total accuracy to whatever degree you demand, and in the majority of cases in a fraction of a second.....To put it another way, all those algorithms, techniques, and procedures I spent years mastering, all the way through to earning my bachelors degree in mathematics, became obsolete within my lifetime..."

I think that really means that we have to rethink what we are doing in math class and whether it really is relevant. This post was Part 1 so, I guess, stay tuned for part 2.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://devlinsangle.blogspot.ca/2018/02/how-todays-pros-solve-math-problems.html

I always appreciate when teachers post their day by days. In this case it's @MrOrr_Geek posting about his semester teaching grade 11 workplace math. It's from a couple years ago and he blogged about the first part of the semester but the rest of the plan is available on a Google Sheet. Take a look
Curriculum Tags: MEL3E
http://mrorr-isageek.com/mel3e-course-outline/

Here's a neat post from @MrHonner that would give some insight as to the effects of vaccination at the same time as looking at the effects of linear and exponential growth on infection rates.
Curriculum Tags: MCR3U, MHF4U, MAP4U
https://www.quantamagazine.org/flu-vaccines-and-the-math-of-herd-immunity-20180205/

Before you get to fraction operations, you might want to prime the pumps with students and do this introductory activity from @JPSilver_fox.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8

Some cool connections to Fibonacci with this art project. Thanks to @MrOrr_Geek for pointing out this one.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://kottke.org/18/02/tree-mountain