Friday, August 25, 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/

Saturday, August 19, 2017

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




Friday, August 11, 2017

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

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




Saturday, 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

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

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

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


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