9-12
Students begin with a problem in a real-world context to motivate the need to construct circumcenters and then incenters of triangles and to make sense of these constructions in terms of bisecting sides and angles.
6-8
A real-life example—taken from a bagel shop, of all places—is used to get students to think about solving a problem symbolically. Students must decipher a series of equations and interpret results to understand the point that the bagel shop’s owner is trying to make.
9-12
In this lesson, students will examine numeric, algebraic, and graphical representations of compositions of function in the context of successive discounts at a retail store.
9-12
Given growth charts for the heights of girls and boys, students will use slope to approximate rates of change in the height of boys and girls at different ages. Students will use these approximations to plot graphs of the rate of change of height vs. age for boys and girls.
9-12
Students will collect information about the National debt, plot the data by decade, and determine whether an exponential curve is a good fit for the data. Then student groups will determine and compare common traits and differences in changes in the National debt in three major eras: the Civil War, World War I, and World War II.
6-8, 9-12
Students will be introduced to modular arithmetic by first examining a five-hour analog clock and its mathematical properties. Then students will investigate patterns and relationships that exist in 12-hour addition and multiplication clock tables.
9-12
In this activity, students will use the Illuminations Line of Best Fit Interactive
to plot the data from two teams during the 2004‑05 NBA season. In
particular, students will look at the data for total points and minutes
played by each of the starters on the Los Angeles Lakers and Detroit
Pistons. The data suggest that Laker Kobe Bryant is an outlier—he
scores more points per minutes than his teammates, which is part of why
some sportswriters have described him as "selfish." But through further
investigation, students will also notice that Piston Ben Wallace is
also an outlier, because he scores fewer points than his teammates.
3-5
In this lesson, students will view several websites and determine what mathematical ideas and concepts are involved in scuba diving. The emphasis is on using technology to help students gain an understanding of how math is used outside of a school setting.
3-5
Students will calculate differences in time zones and explore the effects of traveling across time zones.
3-5
In this lesson, students will use various resources to choose travel dates, compare temperatures, estimate and calculate distances to Belize City, and determine the length of their flight in preparation for a "trip" to Belize.