Through Math for America, I am part of an on-going collaboration with the New York Times Learning Network. My latest contribution, a Test Yourself quiz-question, can be found here:
http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/01/test-yourself-math-dec-1-2010/
This problem was based on estimating and comparing the yearly salaries of union workers who in Pennsylvania who recently agreed to restructure their contracts.
The question was posed recently: can you identify a proportion merely by looking at it?
As was pointed out by astute readers, various lighting and staging issues added a degree of uncertainty to the problem, but even so, a plurality of people were able to correctly identify the ratio of white sugar to total sugar.
As the above sequences of images suggests, the mixture was created from one part white sugar and two parts dark sugar. This makes the proportion of white sugar equal to 1/3.
Stay tuned for the next visual proportion challenge!
Here are my nominees for the 2010 Edublog Awards. (The Edublog Awards Homepage)
Best individual blog: James Stanton (http://www.jamestanton.com/)
Best teacher blog: James Stanton (http://www.jamestanton.com/)
Best Individual Tweeter: republicofmath (http://republicofmath.wordpress.com/)
Best resource sharing blog: NYT Learning Network (http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/)
Best group blog: NYT Learning Network (http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/)
This array of Brussell sprouts initially demonstrated that 40 divided by 9 leaves a remainder of 4. But after some re-grouping, this was the result.
They look so much better demonstrating that 8 times 5 is 40!
