Author: Geoff
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A single robot-made rainbow ; what does it mean?
Artifact This amazing video of a rainbow-painting robot. (h/t: Science Friday.) Guiding Questions How much paint did this guy need of each color? What’s the radius of the rainbow? or, What’s the length of the arm that moves in a semi-circle that paints the rainbow? Which color will run out soonest? And how much sooner?…
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Let’s crowd-source this ; School closure predictor
A couple weeks ago a fellow New Tech math guru and I travelled to Bowling Green, KY to observe some teacher activities. Sadly, school was iced out such that there was a round of early school closures on Day 1 and total shutdown on Day 2. We had some great collaboration and were able to…
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Pythagoras and Plants ; Aunt Bitty’s Gardens
Continuing from last week, we have another potential Pythagorean’s Theorem Project/Problem. This one was sent in by Steve. =================================== AUNT BITTY’S GARDENS Launch: My Aunt Bitty has a business creating “designer gardens”. These are beautiful little triangular gardens that fit into a particular space–usually the corner of a yard. You tell her your space, and…
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My $100 Super Bowl Pick Pack
Now that we’ve heard from Drew, I’ll toss out a few picks that I think are smart mathematically. (Editors note: Don’t gamble on sports. Don’t do it. It’s incredibly stupid. Never, ever use real money to bet on sports. This is for entertainment purposes only.) 1) $20 on 71-75 total points (1/100). We discussed this…
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One person’s $100 Super Bowl Pick Pack
(note: that does not imply that he’s picking the Pack.) Based on our discussion on Friday’s Super Bowl prop bet post , we thought a fun, and possibly marginally educational, activity would be to let students (and teachers!) have $100 of “money” to bet on the myriad of Super Bowl odds, with justification. Here’s a…
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The Super Bowl is 100/1 odds to be in the 71+ point range; is that a good bet?
ESPN.com columnist Bill Simmons and fellow sports gambling addict Cousin Sal had their annual Super Bowl prop bets podcast where they discussed the best gambling deals of this Sunday’s Super Bowl (if gambling were legal, *ahem*). Aside: if you haven’t checked out the list of potential bets for the Super Bowl, you should (how long…
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Friday Happy Hour: Balance, how does it work?
So my kids have this game called “Balance“. It’s basically like a Noah’s Ark version of Jenga, and it’s for ages three and up. It’s generally a two-player game. The game play goes like this: Player A: Place an animal on the boat. Player B: Place an animal on the boat. The game ends when…
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Pythagoras and Pele; Gooooooooooooaaaaaaaa… (to be continued)
…ooooaaaaalllll! There’s about a hundred different ways you could use the following artifacts to construct a lesson around Pythagorean’s Theorem. So I’ll just toss out all the artifacts and let you, esteemed teacher, take it from there. I’d love to get feedback and suggestions on how to implement these materials in the comments below. Artifacts…
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This is the strangest x-axis I have ever seen (update: not really that strange at all)
Update 1: Anonymous points out that it says log scale right under the graph. Yep. That’s it right there. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I need an editor. Thanks anon. So it’s actually not strange, but rather perfectly logical. It’s also Friday. Oh well. Still, there’s got to be something we…
emergent math 