Friday, September 2, 2016

Math Links for Week Ending Sept. 2nd, 2016

Chance News is a wiki that takes statistics in the news and analyzes it for mistakes and interest. There is a semi regular newsletter that comes out. In it there is a section called Forsooth where they showed statistical issues presented by the media. This link is a summary of the best ones since 2005. There is a literal pile here from subjects like percent, probability, stats and more. Perfect to bring up in any class. It's not very visual but each example has a link to the original post which usually has more information.
"I realize I don't have a chance, but nobody's got a chance. So the way I look at it, I have a 50-50 chance -- either I win it or someone else wins it,’ reasoned Barrie Green, 60, after buying a single ticket Monday afternoon …."
If you are interested in the actual newsletter, you can click here to subscribe.
Curriculum Tags: All

An introductory sampling activity you could use to start to get the idea about how sampling works with a data set. There are handouts, ppts, and instructions all here.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8

Via @rmbyrne at Free Technology for Teachers, here's a post on Two Graphing Tools for Google Docs. Even though you can use an equation editor by default, these tools allow you to do CAS and graphing right in your docs.
Curriculum Tags: All

The Math Myth - That is, the idea that all this stuff we teach our students is important. The idea from this professor is that it's not. As he points out, most engineers and actuaries that he knows don't use anything more than Excel and grade 8 math. So why do we do it all. I don't necessarily agree with his last argument but for the most part that actual "stuff" of what we teach isn't too important.
Curriculum Tags: All

A couple here on the idea of Average that are related to each other (they share bits of the story). The first is a great story from the @99piorg podcast. It starts out as a history of the origins of average. Then it goes into how the notion of average helped the military but then how it was later abandoned and along the way the remnants of both of these things show up in everyday life. Click on the link below to listen. The other is a TED talk on the myth of what average is
Curriculum Tags: All

I will continue to keep adding Pokemon Go related posts as often as they come in (I think I have had at least one each week since it came out). So why stop now. How about some data on how the popularity has dropped since it peaked weeks ago? It's not super exciting but it might be topical enough for kids to be interested in analyzing. Check out all the graphs at the link below.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MDM4U, MAP4C


  1. Good stuff in this issue. I really liked reading the "Math Myth" op ed- made me think. Good find!

  2. There is always stuff to be found :-)