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. 

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I think the Monster Prime might be out of date now...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!

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

Rays of Light and The Lunar Eclipse TODAY

Wednesday Evening's Rare 'Impossible' Lunar Eclipse

Check out the Blood Moon this evening. Hopefully the clouds won't cover it. 

6:13pm for Phuket

Here is a clip from NASA

Watch in more detail here from NASA. 

Nobel Prize goes to THE HEXAGON (and some persistent scientists)

"Neuroscience: Brains of Norway : Nature News & Comment." 7 Oct. 2014 <http://www.nature.com/news/neuroscience-brains-of-norway-1.16079>

Edvard and May-Britt Moser have been working together for 30 years. For 28 of those years they have also been married. 

These two scientists embody the learner profiles and show us how persistence, resilience and problem solving can lead to success. Not only that but mistakes along the way helped them to unravel the mystery of how our brains map out our environments. People are now calling it the GPS of our brains.

They have won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, with neuroscientist John O’Keefe at University College London (their former supervisor).

There is no Nobel Prize for Maths as we have discussed in class, but the mathematics is everywhere. Here in our brains wonderful hexagons form the way we sense location.

Please read more about it in the Scientific American and in Nature Magazine. Very exciting brain research! 

Does 1 = 0.9999...?

Ask yourself the question first. What do YOU think about the question and why?

How about the other ninths?

Once you have puzzled over this question, please enjoy the following two videos from Numberphile and Vi Hart, two legends.

Puzzling needs to take at least five minutes.

Also, DP students, the previous post is very new with you in mind. All others are very welcome.

Vi Hart

Numberphile

Number Sense - Thanks Ajarn Dale

Hey there maths fans!

Ajarn Dale sent on some cool "Math Tricks". Some people think that these tricks are cheating, but in actual fact it's about understanding numbers and being able to make them work for YOU.

Check them out here in wisebread.com - thanks Ajarn Dale.
11 useful math tricks

Numbers in a City: New Haven / 1997 / SML by See-ming Lee licensed under CC by A SA

LIVE SHARING - LIGHTNING STRIKES

COOL! GET IN
ENJOY

HERE

Pi - in it is everything π

Ask a Mathematician / Ask a Physicist

Q: Since pi is infinite, do its digits contain all finite sequences of numbers?

Posted on November 8, 2009 by The Mathematician

Mathematician: As it turns out, mathematicians do not yet know whether the digits of pi contains every single finite sequence of numbers. That being said, many mathematicians suspect that this is the case, which would imply not only that the digits of pi contain any number that you can think of, but also that they contains a binary representation of britney spears’ DNA.... read more in the site. Click the Question, the link 

Fascinating stuff!

How to see when you forget your glasses

or how we see things... from Minute Physics.

The Depth of the Problem of MH370

http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/world/the-depth-of-the-problem/931/

Click on the link, this article has a wonderful infographic about just how difficult it is to try and find the black box (Australian invention) of MH370.

They say time is running out, but what about how long it took them to find the Titanic or the Air France aeroplane? They will keep on looking, but will they find this one?

Which governments do you think should continue to look for the wreckage of MH370 and why?

Units of Measurement:

feet and metres 

from google.com

PSI - pounds per square inch
Source - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pounds_per_square_inch

pings
http://science.howstuffworks.com/transport/flight/modern/black-box8.htm
How Stuff Works is a great site.

MYP2 Coders and Artists and Scientists

MYP2 have joined the world in the Hour of Code and Beyond the Hour of Code.

No one has to wait for MYP2 to learn to code, it's all online and it's free. Don't wait.

In a week we will begin our Summative task - Rube Goldberg Machines.

To be honest I had two other ideas for the summative task but then I was fortunate enough to see what they were creating in Visual Art...

Rube Goldberg machines. Too cool. Their imaginations can go wild in Visual Arts and now we can bring them to life using animation and Scratch programming.

We will work in teams and then piece the machines together; working like a machine in groups.

The mathematics needed covers a great deal:
coordinates; Cartesian plane; translations; reflections; rotations; negative and positive numbers; angles, properties of shapes; formulas, using variables and functions; logic statements; scaling and percentages and more and more...


and this site is pretty cool - so nice what you can do with a lot of free time.

Here Come the MYP2 Coders!

Anda is first off the blocks with his two codes

A cool Spiral and something quite Disco (if you have epilepsy, Disco is not recommended because there is a lot of flashing).

Click on the links to see the fun.

Disco programming was developed initially by Tera, then Nom and then Anda took it on too. Excellent collaboration.

Anda's Spiral at code.org http://learn.code.org/sh/11921722

Do you want to learn to code - check out the  Hour of Code for lots of tutorials.

Stay tuned - next week all of MYP2s first programs will be live on the blog.

Synchronisation or Synchronization depending on your point of view, it's all pretty cool

Lots of people are posting a video about a murmuration of starlings on social networks. I came across this video and others many years ago and I wish to see it at a large scale one day.

For more collective noun names for animals that are as cool as a murmuration of starlings and a murder of crows check this out. It's about naming a group of animals, so technically they are mathematical terms. You can't be a called a group without counting to check if there are more than one of something present.

What's your favourite?
Do you do the same thing in your mother tongue?



On the TEDtalk page of our mathematics blog is a video about synchronisation in every day occurrences. I think you will enjoy it.  Steven Stogatz and his talk on "How things in nature tend to sync up" should be at the top of the blog page.

MYP3 Rock the First Ever PIADS CASINO

WOW - impressive work from the mathematicians in MYP3.

Two fun and profitable games were created for the amusement of students and teachers alike.  See below for a summary of the day. We hope to see you next year.

The Mathematics of Chance

The Mathematicians in MYP3 have recently held the first ever Casino at PIADS. 

MYP1, MYP2 and teachers joined us to "have a flutter" and try their luck with our PIADS Bucks. It was a fantastic mathematical experiment. 

The games made large profits - hundreds of Bucks for Bullseye and thousands of Bucks for Pop Mania. They made that money in only 30 minutes! 

How did they do it? The wonderful world of Mathematics, some clever psychology (to make customers feel like winners), visual art and design technology skills to make their games look great. Even if people felt like winners on the day, and many did, the games made the most money by far.  

Calculating probabilities, converting them to odds and then adjusting those odds to favour the house is how profit is made in casinos everywhere. They are rigged and the odds are never fair, but that's no secret. 

When you join MYP3 you can learn about the mathematics of chance and build your own casino.  If you can’t wait, ask an MYP3 to explain it to you.

Why does the house always win?  Mathematics.

Our Area of Interaction Focus was Health and Social Education.

• Looking after ourselves: Being aware of the differences between games of skill and games of chance. 
• Understanding ourselves: How games of chance make us feel. 
• Ourselves in the wider society: How gambling can affect society.

Our MYP3 students will never be fooled by games of chance. They understand how customers are manipulated into playing again and again and why some governments regulate gambling.

See you at the next casino - more games, longer opening times.

CASINO TIME

MYP3 have been busy analysing the mathematics of chance through games.
Their summative task is to design their own casino games.

Can you beat the house? What are your chances? If their mathematics is sound, they should make a profit on the day.

MYP1 and MYP2 (along with some teachers popping along) will try their luck to beat the house on Tuesday.

They know the secrets the casinos use to keep you playing and feel like a winner.

See you on Tuesday in Casino Land.

fake PIADS Bucks provided. No real money will be used.

MYP2 and the Giant Rubber Duck

Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman makes giant ducks.

Each one is unique and they have a message for the world.

What is that message?

The Arrival by Halanslicensed under CC by A NC SA 

MYP2 have been working on the mathematics of generalisation or algebra. They find patterns. They create formulas. They estimate. They justify. They compare methods. They discuss accuracy. They form hypothesis. They tackle long problems, not short one liners. MYP2 are mathematicians at work.

Now they have been asked to bring all of their skills together to work out if Phuket can produce enough rubber for one of these ducks. It is not a yes or no answer, we want details. 

How much rubber is produced right next to PIADS? 

How much rubber is needed?

What are those ducks all about?

Why spread the message with a rubber duck? 

We have more questions - check out the windows of the maths room.