patrick honner

Math teacher in Brooklyn, New York

Classroom Resource: Topical Applications of Mathematics

This is a small but useful collection of classroom resources built around applications of mathematics from the Centre for Innovation in Mathematics Teaching.

http://www.cimt.plymouth.ac.uk/resources/topical/

There are lesson plans and student handouts built around topics like Carbon Footprint, Popular Baby Names, Rankings in Sports, and Physical Fitness, among many others.

There are definitely some interesting ideas and resources here, to help bring these topics into your math classroom and to your students!

By patrick honner, ago

Math Lesson: Fantasy Football

My latest contribution to the New York Times Learning Network is a Math Lesson designed around a simple Fantasy Football-style game.

https://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/26/put-me-in-coach-getting-in-the-quantitative-game-with-fantasy-football/

In this lesson, students use data, statistics, and a novel matchup metric to evaluate players and choose their teams.

As the results come in every week, students can refine their strategies and try to make more accurate projections!

By patrick honner, ago

Fun with the PSAT

My students were recently making fun of some of the math problems on the PSAT.  Apparently, one of the questions went something like this:

After having a bit of a laugh about it, we decided to try to help the PSAT exam writers make a more interesting question.  Here is our revision:

Creating this new question was far more interesting than solving the original!  And thanks to Wolfram|Alpha, we can easily check the answer.

By patrick honner, ago

Polygonal Oddities

This is a crazy collection and categorization of mathematical oddities.

http://www.recmath.org/PolyCur/p6odd/index.html

Here, the word oddity has a specific, technical mathematical meaning:  an oddity is a figure with at least one line of symmetry that is made up of an odd number of copies of some polygon.

I’ve never heard of oddities before, and I learned a lot of new vocabulary words while exploring this page:  polyform, hexapent, and quinquerotary, to name a few!

By patrick honner, ago
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