When Math Happens

I am super impressed with this teacher's work: http://whenmathhappens.com/

Open Middle - A Collection of Challenging Problems

Just found this great site today and plan on incorporating it into my problem library. It has a fresh approach:

http://www.openmiddle.com/

Here is their explanation of the site, listed under the "about" link:

Dan Meyer introduced us to the idea of “open middle” problems during his presentation on “Video Games & Making Math More Like Things Students Like” by explaining what makes them unique:

• they have a “closed beginning” meaning that they all start with the same initial problem.
• they have a “closed end” meaning that they all end with the same answer.
• they have an “open middle” meaning that there are multiple ways to approach and ultimately solve the problem.

Open middle problems require a higher depth of knowledge than most problems that assess procedural and conceptual understanding.   They support the Common Core State Standards and  provide students with opportunities for discussing their thinking.

Some additional characteristics of open middle problems include:

• They often have multiple ways of solving them as opposed to a problem where you are told to solve it using a specific method. Example
• They may involve optimization such that it is easy to get an answer but more challenging to get the best or optimal answer. Example
• They may appear to be simple and procedural in nature but turn out to be more challenging and complex when you start to solve it. Example
• They are generally not as complex as a performance task which may require significant background context to complete. Example

Bike Riding versus driving

There has got to be a three act in this:

#cycling vs #driving pic.twitter.com/ZjRqWfh0jB
— SCPHRP (@SCPHRP) June 3, 2014

Itunes Vs. Amazon, Linear versus exponential fit

great linear versus exponential fit:
https://twitter.com/mjfenton/status/460984209922732033

Female Named Hurricanes Kill More than Male Named Hurricanes

I heard this story yesterday morning on WNYC morning edition and thought it was perfect for a lesson on causation versus correlation. Essentially the data shows a strong correlation between fatalities and the gender of a hurricane name. Essentially they found that female named hurricanes are much more deadly then male named hurricanes. We can present this to our students with the obvious question, "does that mean that the names are causing higher fatalities?" The goal is to get students to recognize how absurd it would be if we thought this was causal. That would mean that we could simply make a hurricane safer (or more deadly) by changing its name. So this gives students a clear distinction between correlated and causal.

So what is happening? What is a possible cause? If you review the story, articles and data below, you can see that people respond differently to a storm based on its name. It is this response that seems to be causing the difference in results. If we are more afraid of a female named storm, we might take more precautions, etc.

This still leads to more questions and class discussion, why do we respond differently? Why do we give names to storms at all?

Here is the radio story:
http://www.npr.org/2014/06/03/318414845/research-americans-less-fearful-of-storms-with-female-names

You can also find this story on their site:
http://www.wnyc.org/story/research-americans-less-fearful-of-storms-with-female-names/

http://www.wnyc.org/story/study-americans-less-fearful-of-storms-named-after-women/


Article on WNYC: http://www.wnyc.org/story/do-female-named-hurricanes-need-to-lean-in/

Article on the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2014/06/02/female-named-hurricanes-kill-more-than-male-because-people-dont-respect-them-study-finds/

Original Study:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/05/29/1402786111.abstract

Download Data from Original Study:
http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2014/05/30/1402786111.DCSupplemental

You can also find the data key here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5FTxsu-S1CoQ1ZSM2VSR3Yxc3c/edit?usp=sharing

And the original data here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5FTxsu-S1CoQVJIVzl4SV9yb0k/edit?usp=sharing