Spreading Rumors!

Welcome to Rumor Middle School! News at Rumor Middle School travels quickly! Use the information presented in the problem to determine how many kids will know a rumor an hour and ten minutes after the first person shared it.  Then, find what time it will be when over 4,000 students know the rumor! Stick with it! Use multiple strategies, and be ready to share and defend your work!

SRS vs. Convenience Sample in the Gettysburg Address

Students have an interesting view of what a random sample looks like. They often feel that just closing their eyes and picking “haphazardly” will be enough to achieve randomness. This lesson should remove this misconception. Students will be allowed to pick words with their personal definition of random and then forced to pick a true simple random sample and compare the results.

Steeper, Faster, Division, and Slope

What does "steeper" mean? What does "faster" mean? And how do these ideas connect to the idea of linear functions? This 3-part series explores these questions and helps students to understand why we divide when computing slope and what proportional correspondence has to do with it all!

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.

Subtracting Integers

This is a series of lessons fouced on Making sense of integer subtraction using number lines, patterns, and the chip model It contains two activities and homework Part 1 - Number lines and Patterns Part 2 - Chip Model Homework To see a related video, go to: http://vimeo.com/71450580

Sugar Packets - Dan Meyer Three Act Task

The question is simple: How many sugar packets are in a soda bottle? The lesson hooks students immediately with the initial video clip of a man sitting in a restaurant downing packets of sugar one-after-another! The mathematics involved is proportional reasoning.

Sunsplash

This is a series of activities from the 2007 CGCC Excellence in Math Junior High Contest Team Project.  You can pick and choose which parts of the project you want to use or do them all! Volume and converting of units Circumference and average speed Understanding average speed Readiing and interpreting line graphs Volume of a cylinder and rates

Survivor - Mathematics!

Students will apply their understanding of linear and quadratic functions to solve a Survivor challenge!

System of Inequalities

Students create a system of inequalities given certain real-life conditions and then find solutions of their system that would fit their scenario.

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. 

Tesla Roadster Loan

Tesla Roadster Trip

The Forest Problem

Students want to know why they would ever use a sampling method other than a simple random sample. This lesson visually illustrates the effect of using a simple random sample (SRS) vs. a stratified random sample. Students will create a SRS from a population of apple trees and use the mean of the SRS to estimate the mean yield of the trees. Students will then create a stratified random sample from the same population to again estimate the yield of the trees. The use of the stratified random sample is to control for a known source of variation in the yield of the crop, a nearby forest.

Theoretical vs Empirical Probability-Dice Activity

Thinking About Exponents

The idea of negative exponents and zero as an exponent is a problem that persists with students into a college calculus class. What is, for example, 2-4 and why? This activity is designed to help students to make sense of exponents from a real-world context.  By the way, I plan to follow this up with an extension including rational exponents like 21/2.

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.

To Rent or Not to Rent....

An real world intro activity to solving systems of equations using a graph.

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.

Tree Diagrams and Compound Probabilities

Goal: The goal of this activity is for students to understand how to find probabilities of compound events by drawing tree diagrams and listing out sample spaces. Depending on the grade level, with or without replacement events can also be used and illustrated. Materials Needed: Each person in the group will need a copy of the worksheet.

Two Pails

This problem will challenge you to think about how to acquire 5 gallons of water if the only tools that you have are a 3 gallon pail and a 7 gallon pail. A great logic problem!

Understanding probability using a deck of cards

This activity is to familiarize your students with a standard deck of cards. Have your students get into groups of 2 or 3 and walk them through the beginning part. You can chose to have your students simplify each probability as a fraction or round to the thousandths place. Hopefully the students will see that all of the probabilities they find will always be between 0 and 1 inclusive.

Valentine Marbles

For this task, Minitab software was used to generate 100 random samples of size 16 from a population where the probability of obtaining a success in one draw is 33.6% (Bernoulli). Given that multiple samples of the same size have been generated, students should note that there can be quite a bit of variability among the estimates from random samples and that on average, the center of the distribution of such estimates is at the actual population value and most of the estimates themselves tend to cluster around the actual population value. Although formal inference is not covered in Grade 7 standards, students may develop a sense that the results of the 100 simulations tell them what sample proportions would be expected for a sample of size 16 from a population with about successes.

What does division mean and how do you do it?

This activity focuses on the idea of divsion and challenges students to make sense of what division means and helps students to make sense of the traditional algorithm of "long division."

What is my portion of the bill?

Who’s the Best Home Run Hitter of All time?

This lesson requires students to use side-by-side box plots to make a claim as to who is the "best home run hitter of all time" for major league baseball.

Why do we need MAD?

Students will wonder why we need to have a value that describes the spread of the data beyond the range. If we give them three sets of data that have the same mean, median, and range and yet are clearly differently shaped then perhaps they will see that the MAD has some use.

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

This is a creative writing project (dealing with Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner) dealing with modeling falling bodies with quadratics and solving quadratic equations. An optional aspect is to have students estimate the instantaneous rate of change.

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. 

Yellow Starburst - Dan Meyer Three Act Task

This lesson is designed to introduce students to probability using Dan Meyer's three-act-task, Yellow Starburst. After viewing a brief introductory video clip, students are asked to determine how many Starburst packs have exactly one yellow Starburst and how many packs will have exactly two yellow Starbursts.