College Success - Comparing Two Populations

In this task, students are able to conjecture about the differences in the two groups from a strictly visual perspective and then support their comparisons with appropriate measures of center and variability. This will reinforce that much can be gleaned simply from visual comparison of appropriate graphs, particularly those of similar scale. Students are also encouraged to consider how certain measurements and observation values from one group compare in the context of the other group. 

Sampling Techniques - Jelly Blubbers

This activity introduces the Simple Random Sample (SRS) to students, and shows why this process helps to get an unbiased sample statistic. Relying on our perceptions can often be deceiving. In this exercisestudents are asked to determine the average length of a jellyblubber (a hypothetically recently discovered marine species) using a variety of techniques. The student will learn that a Simple Random Sample (SRS) is the most accurate method of determining this parameter, and that intuition can be deceptive. 

Nana's Lemonade - Dan Meyer Three Act Task

In a brief video, students are confronted with the situation of a person squeezing a lemon slice into a small cup of water. Then a "big gulp" cup is placed next to the smaller, lemon filled cup. By asking the question, "How many lemon wedges do you need to add for the same lemony taste?" students will begin to experiment and mathematically determine the answer.

Shooting Hoops! - Dan Meyer Three Act Task

In this lesson, students learn to graph quadratic equations, translate between the vertex, standard, and factored forms, and recognize the impact of changing the parameters of a quadratic equation.

What is my portion of the bill?

Pennies From Heaven

The focus of this activity is to describe the shape of a distribution and to describe the center and spread. Students use data they collect (penny ages) to describe the distribution by its SOCS (Shape, Outlier, Center, Spread). 

Is Manute, minute?

A powerpoint presentation that can be used to introduce the topic of scatterplots and lines-of-best fit using a fun context. 

Number Systems - Binary, Decimal, and Other systems

Students can struggle mightily with understanding place value as they begin to add and subtract numbers and "carry" and "borrrow". This short activity can be a great way to help students understand the concept of place value.

Paper-folding - Exponential Growth/Percentage Change

In this activity students are posed a simple question, "How tall will a paper be if it is folded 50 times?" and it is used as a fun way to introduce them to the concepts of growth factors, and percentage change. 

Is the Sine a Circular Function? How about a Star Sine?

Students are often challenged by seeing the conncection between the unit circle and the graph of the sine and cosine functions. This activity is designed to take students out of their comfort zone to experience what the "sine" function would look like if it were based upon other geometric figures. 

Straighten up and Fly Right!

The purpose of this lesson is to allow the students gather data in a fun way and answer a statistical question through analysis of the data.  Students will fly paper airplanes and analyze the data to determine which style of plane flies longer.

Talking Two-Way Tables

When analysis of categorical data is concerned with more than one variable, a two-way table (also known as a contingency table) can be used. These tables provide a foundation for statistical inference, where statistical tests question the relationship between the variables based on the data observed. This activity begins to explore statistical inference and testing. 

Titanic - Two Way Tables

Two way tables help us in so many ways...association and probability are just two! This PP is classroom ready to use with your 8th grade or high school students. 

Titanic & Two-Way Tables (Illustrative Mathematics)

This is the first task in the series of three, which ask related questions, but use different levels of scaffolding. Also, the third task uses a more detailed version of the data table. The emphasis is on developing their understanding of conditional probability.

Histograms vs. Bar Graphs

Using data from the Internet, students summarize information about party affiliation and ages at inauguration of Presidents of the United States in frequency tables and graphs.  This leads to a discussion about categorical data (party affiliations) vs. numerical data (inauguration ages) and histograms vs bar graphs. This activity is from NCTM Illuminations at http://illuminations.nctm.org/Lesson.aspx?id=2983

Creating a Collaborative Classroom Culture: Team Building Activities

A website with many team building activites to assist in building a collaborative classroom culture. Go to: https://getrealmath.wordpress.com/team-building-activities/ and download as many as you want! 

Creating a box plot on the TI 84 Calculator

Steps for entering data into lists and creating a box (box and whisker) plot. 

Creating a Histogram using the TI 83/84 calculator

The steps to creating a histogram on the TI calculator. 

Coin Counting - Dan Meyer Three Act-Task

Systems of equations can be a difficult concept for students to understand. This activity is a useful tool for introducing the concept in a concrete way that will help them make sense of the ideas and procedures for solving a system of linear equations. 

Shipping Routes - Dan Meyer Three Act Task

The questions are simple: As two ships leave port at the same time but at different speeds, we wonder if they will ever meet again? And if so, how long will that take? The lesson hooks students immediately with the initial video clip of two simulated ships leaving port and separating from one another as they travel at slower rates. 

Wile E. Coyote - Modeling with Trigonometric Functions (Writing project)

This project requires students to mathematically model the design of a roller coaster using a sinusoidal function to estimate the total cost of construction.   *If an instructor would like a student solution just contact one of the authors. 

Cal Clulus: In Pursuit of Justice!

This project involves a movie that was written by, directed by, and starring Dr. Scott Adamson and Dr. Trey Cox. The focus of the project is making sense out of average rate of change, instantaneous rate of change, and the Mean Value Theorem. Watch this clip first with your class before doing the activity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBRwU9ubYQo After doing the activity, view the 2nd part of the video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqy3VivFs9Y

Creating an Exponential Model - The Salary Problem

This video is a short demonstration of how a constant percent change can be represented using an exponential function. The context is an individual is given a salary and gets a 5% annual raise.

Exploring the Function Definition and Notation

This worksheet will allow students to explore the function topic by answering questions about the definition, working with the notation, finding domain and range and performing some basic compositions.

Modeling with Exponential Functions

A worksheet involving exponential modeling.

Growth Factors

This short video describes where a growth factor comes from and how to use it for a percent increase.

Transforming a Sine Function

This applet allows the user to transform the coefficients of a sine function and see how it changes the resulting graph.

Definite Integral using Substitution

Inside Mathematics Educator Resource Site

Inside Mathematics is a professional resource for educators passionate about improving students' mathematics learning and performance. This site features classroom examples of innovative teaching methods and insights into student learning, tools for mathematics instruction that teachers can use immediately, and video tours of the ideas and materials on the site.

Mathematics Vision Project Website

MVP provides curricular materials aligned with the Common Core State Standards for secondary mathematics. These items are free to download and remix.