Thursday 7 July 2016

The Anti Primes

During the winter break I saw a video on Numberphile about Antiprimes. This was very exciting for me because I didn't realise it was a real term. Turns out it isn't, they have another cool name for numbers that have lots of factors but one of the Numberphile crew also likes the term Antiprime and that's good enough for me (:

And they confirmed that 360 is one of these numbers.

The 8 Times Tables Can Be Cool

As many of my students know I do not enjoy times tables. I missed quite a bit of primary school maths so speedy tables are not my thing. In particular it's the 8s that make me pause the most. Speed doesn't matter, it's the process. For me it's just doubling my four times tables.

Bec Campbell shared the following with me and yes it is pretty cool. Even cooler is to ask why it happens....


Thursday 9 June 2016

Thanks to Aidan and 7D for sharing this funny mathematics from Abbot and Costello

Check out "Who's on First?", also by them. It's one of my favourites.


Wednesday 1 June 2016

It's been a while, babies and blue whales

Year 7 has been very busy in term two doing things like school camps and NAPLAN. 
Now we are back with our full weeks of math and looking at patterns in the real world. 

Today we looked at the growth rate of babies in their first 13 weeks. 

The WHO provides the data - we used every two weeks to develop models for predicting - interpolating and extrapolating. This way we could check our maths with the real data! 

We used tables, graphs and developing algebraic rules to make predictions and compared their results.  Alex pointed out how ridiculous it would be to keep using our models into teenage years to illustrate how extrapolation can be unreliable.  Here are some notes from today and Alex's example:

How reliable are our models?
Reasonably reliable for interpolating. 
Not as reliable for extrapolating. Remember Alex calculated the weight of a 13 year old at the same growth rate as babies in their first 13 weeks. 

13 years = 13 x 52 weeks

13 years = 676 weeks


Our formula/equation/rule

Let  t = time weeks   and   k = weight in kg
k = 0.25 x t + 3.3
for 13 years old
k = 0.25 x 676 + 3.3

k = 172.3 kg 


That's not average in any country for a 13 year old boy!
The CDC, in the USA,  says the average weight for a male at 13 years old is 51.68229 kg  That's more than 100 kg lighter than our formula says. 
Can you find the average weight of a 13 year old in another country?


BABY BLUE WHALES

We talked about including units on our work to show kilograms otherwise our baby data could be in tonnes or even milligrams. A 3 tonne baby! Crazy!
... or not....? I did some searching....

For interest: Close to 3 tonnes are baby blue whales and their average difference is about 91 kg a day!!
Their formula would be k = 91 x d + 3000 and reliable for 365 days! 
where k = weight in kilograms and d = time in days. 3000 is the initial value (or 2700 - see below). 
After about a year inside its mother's womb, a baby blue whale emerges weighing up to 3 tons (2.7 metric tons) and stretching to 25 feet (8 meters). It gorges on nothing but mother's milk and gains about 200 pounds(91 kilograms) every day for its first year.

Blue Whales, Blue Whale Pictures, Blue Whale Facts - National ...

animals.nationalgeographic.com.au/animals/mammals/blue-whale/


Tuesday 19 April 2016

Scientists need you to count cute baby penguins via the Washington Post



During my morning commute I read about a great project involving penguins, counting, science, ecology and collaboration. That's a lot of boxes ticked.

You can provide some community service by counting penguins in images supplied by scientists.

I was fortunate enough to visit Antarctica in 2013 and loved the penguins. I'll be counting penguins for science and our world. I hope you do too.

You can read the Washington Post article via this link.
You can check out the project via this link.

Please enjoy two of my favourite penguin photos (I have hundreds)!

Antarctica Wildlife

Not all penguin tummies are white. This one is fine, just a messy eater. That's his lunch you can see. 

Saturday 9 April 2016

Base 64 and Youtube

We use base 10 and computers use base 2, aka binary. There are all sorts of number systems and here is another one to think about and it's how Youtube doesn't run out of short urls.


Tuesday 5 April 2016

Cool Maths Facts

Check out these slides of interesting maths facts.
I think the Monster Prime might be out of date now...

SLIDES FOUND HERE


 I like this site because they cite their source on each page. That's principled!

Thursday 3 March 2016

So You Want to Code? Cool!

When we looked at binary numbers and compared them to our lovely Base 10 Decimal number system some of you mentioned that you were interested in learning to code.

You don't have to wait to be shown or taught, you can access so many wonderful learning tools on the internet.

Amazing people have produced The Hour of Code, where you can start coding in just one hour.

They have many different types of code to learn so it doesn't have to end after one hour.

Why learn to code? It's everywhere



Where to begin:

Try these one hour sessions from the Hour of Code
Make your own Flappy Bird game
Figure out a few mazes with Bill Gates
Create beautiful spirals and designs
Star Wars fun - this one is new, I haven't tried it yet. Exciting!


Wednesday 2 March 2016

The BBC and Your Life So Far..

A while ago for another class I posted a cool created by the BBC.

http://thisismathsland.blogspot.com.au/2014/10/your-life-on-earth-cool-interactive.html

Input some data about yourself and then see what has happened since you were born...

There are some very big numbers for you to enjoy.


Wednesday 24 February 2016

BIG NUMBERS and a COOL SITE

Thanks to Tom Avent for sharing two Youtube channels I had not seen before, and I like to watch science and maths videos. I spent about an hour looking around.

Here is one to get you started with some big numbers from the good people at ASAP Science:

But wait... there's more...
This is another excellent Youtube channel called FW Thinking

Enjoy! I did (:


Thursday 18 February 2016

Roman Numerals

Hello all - Catherine Fee shared this video with me and we watched it in class to look at a way of communicating your knowledge and understanding of a number system from history.

Thanks Catherine!

Monday 15 February 2016

Mathematical Humour

Thanks to Jack Edwards, in 7D,  for sharing this Mathematical joke. Have you seen any funny mathematical jokes?


Thanks to Stephen Guerra, in 7D, 

History of Number Systems Investigation - some links

Where to begin when looking for information on different number systems?

You could ask your parents - maybe they know about a cool system for numbers and counting. 

You could ask your librarian - there are books about mathematics!

There are some sites online too. Ms. O'Hara and I have found some sites to share with you.
If you search, use good search terms. One of my favourites is "for kids". I use this in almost every search I do (:

Binary at mathisfun http://www.mathsisfun.com/binary-number-system.html
Counting on your fingers with binary http://www.mathsisfun.com/numbers/binary-count-fingers.html

Roman Numerals http://www.ducksters.com/kidsmath/roman_numerals.php

Archimedes Lab http://www.archimedes-lab.org/numeral.html

Numberphile is a wonderful Youtube channel

This one has a long list of number systems and labels their complexity or simplicity with happy and not so happy faces.   http://gwydir.demon.co.uk/jo/numbers/comparison.htm  
Another page on this site is http://gwydir.demon.co.uk/jo/numbers/index.htm with a few famous number systems.

This is a bit more ‘wordy’: http://www.math.wichita.edu/history/topics/num-sys.html

This site had some interesting facts, but it might be a little challenging with its sophisticated matheamatical language http://mentalfloss.com/article/31879/12-mind-blowing-number-systems-other-languages

Sunday 14 February 2016

Billy the Bug and Graph Mole are Hungry

Hello Grade 7 or anyone else that struggles with plotting, reading or writing coordinates.

Use a game to learn how to do this. No worksheets required!
Learn through the game and mistakes along the way. Feed Billy, he's hungry...

Billy the Bug - right here!


Graph Mole has extension activities - negative indices and also decimals. You start with positive integers.


Friday 12 February 2016

Student Mathematical Art - Year 7 2016

Have you been enjoying Spirograph online?

Oli Bilston shared his beautiful work with me in class and then sent me the image. Do you have any you'd like to contribute to this page? Scroll to see more...

Oli Bilston 7D Wesley GW





















Stephen Guerra 7D Wesley GW
Stephen Guerra 7D Wesley GW


Stephen Guerra 7D Wesley GW



Bec Campbell 7D Wesley GW

Tuesday 9 February 2016

Growing your Brain

You've heard me talk about making mistakes and taking your time. Here is an expert, Jo Boaler, taking you through some of the latest in brain research. Jo is a professor of Mathematics Education at Stanford University in the USA.



Remember 18 x 5 and all the different ways to solve this problem. 
Which was your method? Show your method and try another. 

Do the same using your method and one other with 16 x 7 or    14 x 22
Show your working you did in your head visually like the examples below for 18 x 5


Friday 5 February 2016

The Human Calculator

Thank you to Aidan Sturge. I did enjoy and was pleased to start class with it today. I am also keen to check out that Youtube channel. Thanks for sharing!

From: Aidan Sturge
Subject: human calculator

Check this video out this guy I saw on TV a while ago he is faster than  a calculator the link is below:


Hope you enjoy

-Aidan