Through Math for America, I am part of an ongoing collaboration with the New York Times Learning Network. My latest contribution, a Test Yourself quiz-question, can be found here
Test Yourself Math — January 22, 2014
This question deals with the loosening of marijuana laws in New York State. Approximately how many misdemeanor charges for marijuana possession were issued per day in New York City between 2002 and 2012?
Today we celebrate a Permutation Day! I call days like today permutation days because the digits of the day and month can be rearranged to form the year.
Celebrate Permutation Day by mixing things up! Try doing things in a different order today. Just remember, for some operations, order definitely matters!
My latest contribution to the New York Times Learning Network is a collection of ideas for using inforgraphics to explore mathematical concepts.
One activity has students look for ways in which graphs and graphics can be used to tell a particular side of a story.
Browse The Times with a critical eye. Think about the side of the story a given graph is being used to tell, and investigate how issues of interval and scale affect how the information is conveyed. For example, in this Economix post, a graph is being used to show that unemployment is trending at a particular value, but the same graph with a different time interval makes the trend seem a little less significant.
The Times is full of beautiful representations of information, which create great opportunties for quantitative exploration, anaylsis, and discussion. For more ideas, you can read the entire piece here.
You can almost see the equation of the generating curve of this purple vase: a piecewise function consisting of a vertical line segment, an arc of a circle, and then a line segment with negative slope.
Through Math for America, I am part of an ongoing collaboration with the New York Times Learning Network. My latest contribution, a Test Yourself quiz-question, can be found here
Test Yourself — Math, January 8, 2014
This question is about smoking-related deaths in the United State. Of the 2.5 million deaths per year, what percentage are smoking-related?