Month: December 2014

Categories
Algebra Class Openers

Class Opener – Day 68 – Some Special Squares?

A semester goes by so quickly under block scheduling, and after tommorow I only have 3 full weeks left with my freshmen. Many of them will move to Algebra 2 next semester, and I’m hoping to put them in a good place to remain successful in their high school math careers by thinking about the “why” – how everything we learn in math is connected, and form new connections when new ideas are encountered.

These freshmen are one of our first groups to have had Algebra 1 in 7th grade, followed by Geometry in 8th grade. One difference I have observed with this structure is that my current 9th graders seem less confident with their algebra skills than past classes.  I have to be careful with this generalization, as it’s easy to fill into a “the sky is falling” trap – maybe this year is really no different than previous years, but it sure feels that way.  In particular, I sensed a good bit of uneasiness this week when multiplying binomials or factoring trinomials made an appearance during this past week of work on function operations.  Next week, we’ll take a deeper look at polynomials as a segue into algebra 2.  Today’s opener is taken from the awesome Nrich site, titled “Plus Minus”, and I hope to build some connections from their existing knowledge of “difference of squares” patterns. You can find many class resources for this problem there.

squaresI asked students to think about the equations on the board and tell me what they noticed. Does the information on the board help them generate any additional entries? The class was divided into two camps: those who dove into their calculators to “guess and check” for more, and those who observes some patterns in both the numbers and the equations as a whole.

The class did develop some additons to the list, but I didn’t notice many students making a connection to any previous knowledge….until….

I notice that 55 and 45 add up to 100, and 105 and 95 add up to 200

Oh yes, yes, yes….tell me more…..please…….

But the second half, where we look at the differences, was missing.  I’m not going to force the issue yet, as I want them to find it.  Later in class, we did a “read and recognition” activity to get unlock some of their trapped algebra knowledge.  10 questions, 30 seconds each, all relating to a factoring pattern.  Many of their “difference of squares” cobwebs were dusted off, but we still have some work to do.

We’re going to keep these inetresting number patterns on the board for the next few days, maybe we’ll add some to the list. It will be interesting to see how we grow in comfort over the next week!

Categories
Algebra Class Openers

Class Opener – Day 67 – Verifying Inverse Functions

We’re finishing up our unit on function operations.  Yesterday we developed the definition of inverse functions (using only linear functions) and graphed to demonstrate the symmetry. Time to see what we have learned:

functions

Many students’ instincts let them down on the first pair, believing them to be inverses. But after my prodding that they somehow verify the inverse relationship, we soon verified that f(g(x)) did not produce the result we desired.   The second example was then complete easily.

But what about that third problem?  They sure seem like inverses.  One student offered his proof for the pair:

They are inverses just because I know.

Sometimes ideas in math are just that obvious, and maybe we don’t need to prove them specifically.

On the board, we “proved” that both f(g(x)) and g(f(x)) both seem to simplify as x.  And a few numerical examples help show this:

  • f(g(5)) = 5
  • g(f(10)) = 10
  • g(f( -6 )) = 6……. ruh roh……

Students in my class have not been exposed to a formal definition of the square root function, and this led to a nice discussion of absolute value, and the need to restrict the domain in order to consider inverses. Planting seeds for algebra 2, which many of my students will take next semester, is always a bonus.

Categories
Class Openers Statistics

Class Opener – Day 66 – Surprising Coin Patterns

A short post today, as I am out the door for a meeting with our NCTM local group, ATMOPAV. Please check out our website, where we have information on local awards, and house our award-winning newsletter!

I enjoy giving problems with solutions which go against our instinct. In statistics, there are many opporunities for this, and today’s opener in my AP class seemed innocent enough:

Which will more likely occur first in a string of coin tosses: HTH or HTT?

After a few moments of debate, there was universal agreement that the two patterns are equally likely, and therefore we should have an equal expectation of seeing them occur first in a string.  But the correct answer goes against this intuitive notion.

Peter Donnelly’s TED Talk – “How Stats Fool Juries” is easily digestible for the high school crowd. I show it over 2 days, first to present the coin-tossing problem. Then in our next class meeting I will show the second half, where conditional probabilities and the multiplication rule make appearances in courtroom trials.  In the video below, fast-forward to about the 5:30 mark if you want to learn about the coin-tossing problem, or watch from the beginning for some statistics humor.