Math Links for Week Ending Sept 15th, 2017

So there is a relatively new math podcast out: My Favourite Theorem is hosted by @niveknosdunk and @evelynjlamb and each episode they interview a mathematician and ask what their favourite theorem is. There is only a few episodes now but so far there is a mix of theorems well above gr12 to things that could be used in grades below gr12. Each episode is relatively short so it's a nice little podcast that you could listen to to get some neat ideas for class. For example, how about this video from 1966 about the mean value theorem. You can get all the podcasts and transcripts at this link but you can get more descriptions and extra stuff at the Roots of Unity Blog.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/

The Theorem of the Mean Policeman (1966) from Eric Cornwell on Vimeo.

In this recent episode of 99% Invisible @mathbabedotorg talks about the problems with algorithms and other topics from her book "Weapons of Math Distruction".
 Curriculum Tags: All
http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-age-of-the-algorithm/

Ever see the path of satellites? Ever wonder why the path looks sinusoidal? Blame the Mercator map
Curriculum Tags: MCR3U, MHF4U
https://www.scienceabc.com/eyeopeners/why-do-satellites-orbits-look-like-a-sinusoidal-wave-on-the-world-map.html

Here's a TED-Ed video on some of the different ways to prove the Pythagorean Theorem.
Curriculum Tags: Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YompsDlEdtc

In this video @standupmaths does some work with i^i and makes connections to Euler's Identity.
Curriculum Tags: MCR3U, MCV4U, MHF4U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tlHQOKMHGA

This image they made with the digits of this prime is pretty cool
Curriculum Tags: All
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQQ8IiTWHhg

I have always heard about Casting out Nines but never really knew what it was. It's actually pretty neat and it's a great way for your students to practice their math facts while practicing their math facts.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlndIiQa20o

A painting for the artists in your class that connects to Pythagorean Theorem
Curriculum Tags: Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P
https://www.almost-there.co.uk/unknown-pleasures-april-2016

Math Links for Week Ending Sept. 8th, 2017

When I was at Twitter Math Camp this summer one of the "My Favourites" was from @SweenWSweens. He talked about using @Desmos Marbleslides challenges all the time in his class. Well he has put all of them in one Desmos Activity. Check it out at the link below
Curriculum Tags: MPM2D, MCR3U, MCF3M, MHF4U
http://sweeneymath.blogspot.ca/2017/08/a-full-year-set-of-36-weekly.html

I think that the more real examples of how probability works we can show students the better. In this case the idea discussed is the "hundred year flood". More specifically the idea that what it means is not that once in every 100 years there will be a bad flood but instead there is a 1% chance every year that there will be a bad flood. These are two different things and they go through some of the math.
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/its-time-to-ditch-the-concept-of-100-year-floods/

"John Urschel of the Baltimore Ravens was the only player in the N.F.L. simultaneously getting a Ph.D. in math at M.I.T. But after a new study came out linking football to brain damage, he abruptly retired" - this story is probably a nice general interest topic spanning sports to math. Listen below.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://freakonomics.com/podcast/brain-damage/

Sometimes I think that when it comes to transformations, dilatations are sometimes the hardest to describe. In this series of videos Dane Ehlart has a series of videos that shows them visually. Check them out below
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
https://whenmathhappens.com/2017/08/29/dilations/
https://whenmathhappens.com/2017/08/31/dilations-day-2/
https://whenmathhappens.com/2017/08/31/dilations-day-3/

And as an extra challenge Dane has some images where he asks to describe the dilatations then gives video solutions (see links below for solutions).
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
https://whenmathhappens.com/2017/09/05/dilation-1/
https://whenmathhappens.com/2017/09/05/dilation-2/

Math Links for Week Ending Sept 1st. 2018

Here in Ontario the results are starting to come out for this year's provincial tests. Apparently, again, grade 6 math scores are stagnant at about half of students reaching provincial standard. Of course there are all kinds of reasons that everyone has for this but I thought that @mathewoldridge said it best in this article where he basically talks about my favourite solution, using a balanced approach of traditional and new methods.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://www.pressreader.com/canada/the-globe-and-mail-prairie-edition/20170831/281625305441609

Personally, although I get the importance of them, I have always made fun of "Think,Pair,Share" or "Talk to your elbow partner" because, really, can't you just say "Talk to the person next to you". All joking aside, I really like this tweak from @saravdwerf. She calls it Stand and Talk and she goes into great detail on how to use it to get your kids to talk about math in your classes. Well worth the read.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://saravanderwerf.com/2017/08/09/stand-talks-the-best-thing-i-ever-did-to-get-students-talking-to-one-another/

Like I said, everyone has an opinion. In this article the solution to Ontario's math woes is making sure you teach the teachers math (speaking of elementary teachers). I only partially agree. I think that, to some extent, teachers do need to know the math but more than that they need to know math for teaching. Which means needing to know how to handle things when kids make mistakes. Read the article at the link and then watch @Deborah_Ball's video about math for teaching
Curriculum Tags: All
https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/the-real-issue-in-ontarios-schools-the-teachers-need-to-be-taught-math/article36136069/

Though they don't go into too much detail about the math, it was used to determine the exact moment the space station went across the eclipse. It was only for an instant but it was so cool that they could figure it out. Math power!
Curriculum Tags: All
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lepQoU4oek4

I think this is really just Babylonian homework. Click the link to see the video. Thanks to @MrEsping_Math for this one
Curriculum Tags: MPM2D, MFM2P
https://www.facebook.com/NowThisFuture/videos/1708018539239319/?hc_ref=ARSA3omN7x2lj_LjZ4qG4Q3DFNKuahPLczP3-cf9qQ6obxkqSK5g2zGZeFJayxk9qNk&pnref=story

Some Logarithmic humour
Curriculum Tags: MHF4U
https://twitter.com/aap03102/status/901435497884655616

What did the Mathematician say when he was drowning....? #DoodlingOnSaturdayAfternoon #BeenWorkingWithLogsThisWeek pic.twitter.com/XgCFA89bHI

— Chris Smith (@aap03102) August 26, 2017

Math Links for Week Ending Aug. 25th, 2017

As far as I'm concerned we can't have enough books about how math can be enjoyable and how it is an essential part of life. In his book "Pi of Life: The Hidden Happiness of Mathematics" Ontario educator @mathgarden's does just that. Blending pop culture with traditional and new mathematics, I think you (and your students) will be sure to find something of interest here.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781475833768/Pi-of-Life-The-Hidden-Happiness-of-Mathematics#

I like this little activity from @Desmos dealing with rates of change and the equation y = ax.
Curriculum Tags: MPM1D, MFM2P
https://teacher.desmos.com/activitybuilder/custom/584f275271adce170c8d13f4


In this time of so called "fake news" it seems we need some methods to distinguish the good from the bad. This is especially true of opinion polls. In this post, @fivethirtyeight gives us guidelines for determining whether a poll is credible or not. Beyond the what, when, where, why questions you can ask they give other things to look at to determine if a poll is good.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MBF3C, MDM4U
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fake-polls-are-a-real-problem/
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-to-avoid-falling-for-a-fake-poll/

 If you are looking for a complex problem for your students to work with that deals with volumes of composite shapes then look no further than the napkin ring problem. There is a lot of algebra needed for this but nothing beyond simple solving equations and Pythagorean theorem in this cool relationship.
Curriculum Tags: MPM1D, MFM2P, MCR3U, MCF3M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J51ncHP_BrY

From @BenOrlin comes a set of reasons that you shouldn't buy two (or even one) lottery tickets. Follow the link to get the whole story.
Curriculum Tags: MBF3M, MDM4U
https://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2017/07/26/never-buy-two-lottery-tickets/

Math Links for Week Ending Aug. 18th, 2017

This will be an abbreviated math links because I am up north cottaging with very little Internet access (or electricity for that matter) but it seems fitting that since it is close to the beginning of the school year (at least here in Ontario) that @RobertKaplinski has a short post about setting up classroom norms.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://robertkaplinsky.com/30-second-classroom-norms-speech/

Here's a nice little Desmos activity dealing with transformations. Although the notations used doesn't quite match up with Ontario curriculum, it shouldn't be too much of a stretch for our grade 7&8 students. But the concepts of transformations should be easier to deal with with these visual examples.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
http://blog.desmos.com/post/164342183367/friday-fave-for-august-18

Are you going to check out the eclipse on Monday? Maybe you might want to add some trig related eclipse activities to your classes.
Curriculum Tags: MPM2D, MPM2P
https://www.yummymath.com/2017/total-solar-eclipse-apparent-sizes/






Use this video game to teach calculus (or at least limits and continuity). Thanks to @Esping_Math for this one. Curriculum Tags: MCV4U
http://kotaku.com/i-learned-calculus-with-a-video-game-and-it-was-surpri-1797982791

Math Links for Week Ending Aug. 11th, 2017

For a while @Desmos has been teasing us with their geometry app but it wasn't very useful because you couldn't save anything. Well now you can. Just log into your @desmos account and save away. Next step will be to make it available on Teacher.desmos.com.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://www.desmos.com/geometry

This is so simple and so easy to do. A nice and perplexing way to have kids work with adding decimals.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7
https://twitter.com/Jstevens009/status/894753416857010176

Based on an earlier tweet from @gfletchy, I created three disappearing decimal problems.
Where do the decimals go? How do you know? #mtbos pic.twitter.com/oHIcsc5HF9

— John Stevens (@Jstevens009) August 8, 2017

Having spent the last few posts talking about Twitter Math Camp, it seems fitting that @wheeler_laura did a sketchnote about @pgliljedahl and @judylarson3 's paper about the #MTBoS.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://mslwheeler.wordpress.com/2017/07/27/what-drives-the-collective-knowing-learning-of-the-mtbos-community/

A new video from @numberphile that might be useful when talking with students about factoring (especially if they like baseball).
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCq04N9it8U

Who doesn't like graphing memes
Curriculum Tags: MPM2D, MFM2P
https://twitter.com/BryanPenfound/status/893953882182701056

Saw this math meme and laughed so hard! Had to share 😂 pic.twitter.com/dQgkFwwGkR

— Bryan Penfound 🌐 (@BryanPenfound) August 5, 2017

Math Links for Week Ending Aug. 4th, 2017

A few more links left over from last weeks Twitter Math Camp. One of the flex sessions was from @jgough on how she uses sketchnoting. Below is her summary of @Gfletchy's keynote. Check her Twitter feed out for more like this.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://twitter.com/jgough

Sharing my #Sketchnote from @gfletchy #TMC17 Keynote. ❤️ 5 important lessons 🇨🇦 pic.twitter.com/Fdd05lsqP7

— Jill Gough (@jgough) July 28, 2017

In my morning session I was introduced to this nice whiteboard activity from @kellyoshea. The simple premise is that students are given a problem and asked to write a solution that has one intentional mistake on a whiteboard. Everyone else plays the "Mistake Game" to find the mistake. See all the details at the link below. Thanks to @Stoodle @PiSpeak for this one
https://kellyoshea.blog/2012/07/05/whiteboarding-mistake-game-a-guide/

Also from Twitter Math Camp is a neat little idea from @Borschtwithanna. Use Desmos Activity builder as an entrance card. Check it out.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://teacher.desmos.com/activitybuilder/custom/57d82d6420bbe80309333268

The Global Math Project is coming up in the fall and will be using Exploding Dots as it's vehicle. Here @Giohio has created a neat little Geogebra app to simulate them.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://twitter.com/giohio/status/891402537810763777

Exploding Dots w/Sliders https://t.co/4jVqo8KkWM@geogebra @dynamic_math @jamestanton pic.twitter.com/ZEjHUoKofp

— Steve Phelps (@giohio) July 29, 2017

We are all born mathematicians but somehow the education system beats it out of some of us.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/08/01/530053714/guess-what-were-all-born-with-mathematical-abilities

Some great ideas to help students in math class from @saravdwerf. It's a long post but well worth the read. thanks to @stoodle and @pispeak for this one
https://saravanderwerf.com/2016/05/24/the-1-thing-i-did-in-my-support-math-classes/

Some probability and permutations from Numberphile
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbXg5EI5t4c

A nice bar graph of the words spoken by each character on The Office.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MDM4U,
https://twitter.com/DataIsBeautiful/status/891335764075827200

Total Line Count Of Main Characters in The Office [OC] https://t.co/UQ4JxzRi7R #dataviz pic.twitter.com/SGjrBGzaOC

— /r/DataIsBeautiful (@DataIsBeautiful) July 29, 2017

Good fraction stuff just appearing at Twitter Math Camp.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
https://twitter.com/gfletchy/status/890901548276092928

.@mathhombre asks "Are these rows of fraction tiles the same? If not, what's the difference?" @JSchwartz10a #tmc17 pic.twitter.com/1rsxbG5I3I

— Graham Fletcher (@gfletchy) July 28, 2017

I saw this on America's Got Talent last week. You can surely ask some annuity questions.
Curriculum Tags: MCR3U, MBF3C, MCF3M
https://twitter.com/davidpetro314/status/892568662716108801

There are math questions lurking in this #AmericasGotTalent prize disclaimer. How would you use it your class? #mathchat #MTBoS #ITeachMath pic.twitter.com/u3gKO5uort

— David Petro (@davidpetro314) August 2, 2017

Apparently is was John Venn's birthday this week. Thanks to @mlbrackmartin for this one
Curriculum Tags: All
 https://www.facebook.com/Invesnecky/photos/a.469195666446184.107893.123854834313604/1613038612061878/?type=3&theater