Very interesting. Remember that to convert a:b odds (against, which is what the folks laying the bets will give) to probabiilty you take p=b/(a+b). This site lists the Yankees as 2:1 to win the American League, so if you think the probability is greater than 1/3 you should take the bet (theoretically speaking; please obey all applicable laws!). The Red Sox are 7:4, giving p=4/11.
"A McNugget number is a positive integer that can be obtained by adding together orders of McDonald's® Chicken McNuggets"
While these numbers are interesting in themselves, I'm particularly taken by the idea of building an interesting problem based on consumer or popular culture. What other prompts might we find in a similar vien?
"A McNugget number is a positive integer that can be obtained by adding together orders of McDonald's® Chicken McNuggets"
Find the largest number that IS NOT a McNugget number.
This unit gives a historical background to mathematics education in South Africa, to outcomes-based education and to the national curriculum statement for mathematics. The traditional approach to teaching mathematics is then contrasted with an approach to teaching mathematics that focuses on 'doing' mathematics, and mathematics as a science of pattern and order, in which learners actively explore mathematical ideas in a conducive classroom environment.
Abstract: "Human adults from diverse cultures share intuitions about the points, lines, and figures of Euclidean geometry. Do children develop these intuitions by drawing on phylogenetically ancient and developmentally precocious geometric representations that guide their navigation and their analysis of object shape? In what way might these early-arising representations support later-developing Euclidean intuitions? To approach these questions, we investigated the relations among young children's use of geometry in tasks assessing: navigation; visual form analysis; and the interpretation of symbolic, purely geometric maps. Children's navigation depended on the distance and directional relations of the surface layout and predicted their use of a symbolic map with targets designated by surface distances. In contrast, children's analysis of visual forms depended on the size-invariant shape relations of objects and predicted their use of the same map but with targets designated by corner angles. Even though the two map tasks used identical instructions and map displays, children's performance on these tasks showed no evidence of integrated representations of distance and angle. Instead, young children flexibly recruited geometric representations of either navigable layouts or objects to interpret the same spatial symbols. These findings reveal a link between the early-arising geometric representations that humans share with diverse animals and the flexible geometric intuitions that give rise to human knowledge at its highest reaches. Although young children do not appear to integrate core geometric representations, children's use of the abstract geometry in spatial symbols such as maps may provide the earliest clues to the later construction of Euclidean geometry. "
I really like this article because of how relatable it is. I want my students to ask questions but getting them to ask them is the tricky part. Encouraging them constantly that they can do it and to ask questions can be exhausting but that's what I want so that they will become confident and improve.
I also love the end of the article were she talks about giving credit for showing work even if the answer is wrong. I do this in my classroom as well because if I see that the student is trying then I can hopefully help them in he future move toward the correct answer.
This is a great article. I run into adults today who when I say I am going to teach math they say "ooh why? Math was alway so hard." And I can admit at times my response it "but it's so easy." Which obviously isn't the greatest response to that. However, they react the same way the article describes, by claiming they aren't "math people" and didn't get it. But every one can learn math (can learn anything for that matter).