Category: tasks
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So, what exactly am I supposed to eat? The new MyPlate icon vs. the classic Food Pyramid vs. Geometry.
A month ago, I was considering writing a post on the old (now “old, OLD”) food pyramid – you know, the one we all grew up with – and the new (now “old”) food pyramid, unleashed in 2005. It would be about area of triangles and trapezoids and Geometry and possibly graphic design. See, here’s…
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The Minnesota Timberwolves are complaining about having the second pick in the NBA Draft. Do they have a point?
Lest this become a sports-draft blog, I feel contractually obligated to post about the NBA Draft Lottery, what with the Cavs winning and the statistical odds and all. Last night, the Cleveland Cavaliers (my favorite team for you non-twitter followers) won the NBA Draft Lottery, meaning, by chance they were awarded the #1 overall pick…
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U-haul Linear Systems problem (updated and improved)
A couple weeks ago I posted this problem. I like the problem, but I wasn’t a huge fan of its solution and frankly, it sort of got away from me. Thankfully, my colleagues are more adept than I am at developing clear problems. So here’s the updated, improved version. =============================================== Moving On Up Artifact / Entry Event…
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Do NFL teams actually use that draft pick chart when trading draft picks?
The 2011 National Football League draft of players is tomorrow, and I was inspired by a really interesting post over on Mr. Honner’s blog regarding the NFL Draft Pick Trade Value chart and exponential decay. The gist is this: somewhere, sometime, someone came up with a chart that assigned a numerical value to every pick…
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The Dallas Mavericks are 2-16 in playoff games officiated by Danny Crawford. Is this statistically significant?
Artifact. This shocked me. The Mavs have a 2-16 record in playoff games officiated by Crawford, including 16 losses in the last 17 games. Dallas is 48-41 in the rest of their playoff games during the ownership tenure of Mark Cuban, who has been fined millions of dollars in the last 11 years for publicly…
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A stop-sign vs. a stoplight; when does each make sense? (Part 2, Math modeling)
I know it’s been a while since we visited this, but quick recap: We want to figure out when it is appropriate to have a stop-sign at an intersection versus a stoplight. In Part 1, we made some assumptions about stop-sign wait time modeling and developed an equation that gave us the total wait time…
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A stop-sign vs. a stoplight ; when does each make sense? (Part 1, Math Modeling)
Artifact Can we use math modeling and/or equations to answer the question of when it becomes advantageous to install a stoplight vs. a stop-sign? Can we “ambush” students by having them create equations without really knowing it? What are some of the things we need to know about this? Guiding Questions How long does a…
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A 90-yard punt ; Quadratics
So upon my call last week for quadratic activities, I got a ton of resources in my inbox. I’ll post them soon after I’ve had a chance to look through them. Until then, here’s something I cooked up that could go several different directions, depending on your students’ needs. Artifact This terribly grainy video of…
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The Wacky Algebra of NFL Passer Rating
Artifact The following formula calculates NFL Passer rating. (wiki) (note: each component has a predetermined MAX and MIN value that appeared to be pulled out of thin air.) Personally, I would simply present this equation to students at the beginning of class and let them stare at it a while and try to figure some…
emergent math 