How cool is integration???????
Archive for April, 2009
OMG!!! Year 12 Maths is Cool. It’s on Youtube
April 30, 2009Footy, footy, footy…. and more footy!!!
April 28, 2009As you know mathspigs All football codes are awash with statistics. It seems that a football player cannot score, sneeze or stratch themselves without someone keeping the statistics.
Here’s the question. Do these statistics mean anything???? We’ll start with AFL football. 
Adam Cooney, Western Bulldogs won the AFL Brownlow Medal in 2008. Mathew Richardson and Gary Ablett were joint runners up and Simon Black (Brisbane Lions) came 3rd.
You will find these results and more statistics on the AFL website: #mce_temp_url#
Here are some statitics for the 2008 season:
1st: Adam Cooney (Western Bulldogs) Games: 25 kicks: 311 Disposals 637 Marks: 98 Goals: 23
Joint 2nd: Matthew Richardson (Richmond) Games: 20 kicks: 202 Disposals 364 Marks: 222 Goals: 48
Joint 2nd: Gary Ablett (Geelong) Games: 21 kicks: 288 Disposals: 606 Marks: 100 Goals: 26
3rd: Simon Black (Brisbane Lions) Games: 21 kicks: 253 Disposals 539 Marks: 61 Goals: 10
Do these statistics give us useful information?
To answer this question mathspigs we need some graphs. Go to the AFL website and collect more stats on the first 10 players in the AFL 2008 Brownlow Medal tally.
Then draw 3 bar graphs one for kicks, one for disposals and one for marks. In each of these graphs the 1st bar is for the Brownlow top scorer, 2nd bar and the 3rd bar for the next two scorers, and so on.
If the statistics have meaning then we should see a very clear trend in the graphs. Do the graphs, mathspigs and post your results in the comments.
Mathspig goes Global
April 24, 2009Mathspig has been sighted on The Times (UK) ON Line.
Sarah Ebner is the Editor of Schoolgate for The Times(UK).
She runs the Schoolgate blog which is a fab resource for teachers. It not only covers confronting school-based issues (Should girls take their contraceptive pills to school?) but also includes youtube links and fun Lists such as What books have you lied about Reading? Here’s a Top 10 and The Worst 15 teachers in Movies.
!If you see Bill Murray playing golf, run for it!!!!!
April 22, 2009Bill Murray, according to The Australian (20th April 2009), hit a woman on the head
with a golf ball when playing in recently in the TPC Tampa Bay Outback Pro Am. Murray hooked on the ninth and clocked the woman, Gayle DiMaggio, on the head as she stood in her own backyard. (Note Mathspigs: Probablity of being hit on the head by a golf ball increased if you live next door to a golf course. ) Despite getting stitches in her head, the only compensations DiMaggio requestd was a signed copy of Caddyshack DVD? Is she mad? If she got him to sign the ball as well and put them on e-Bay…what price, eh?????
How dangerous is golf?
Unfortunately, golf does not seem to be good for the health of birds as this youtube shos.
Meanwhile, on the earlier this year Pro golfer, Trip Isenhour, killed a red-shouldered hawk that was annoying him while trying to film a golf training video. He took several shots to do it and was horrified. He said he was only trying to scare it away. He has now been charged with killing a migratory bird, an offence which carries a maximum 14 month jail sentence. #mce_temp_url#
The birds have managed some revenge. http://www.golftoday.co.uk reports that a goose hit by a golf ball while it was standing near a water hazard on a golf course in Massachusetts was so annoyed it kicked the ball into the water.
Can you duck a golf ball?
Here is the challenge Mathspigs.
Golf balls travel at about 130 – 170 kph (NSW Golf Association). The highest recorded speed of a golf ball was 328kph ( 203 miles per hour) by Jason Zuback.
The top speed for a Formula I racing car, by the way, is 360 kph (220 mph). But due to spin and drag a golf ball looses around half it’s speed before it hits the ground.
Can you duck a golf ball mathspigs?
First calculate the speed of a golf ball when it hits the ground (or a head ) when driven by an average golfer or Jason Zubak? If you were standing in your back yard and suddenly you saw a golf ball 10m away before it hit you, could you duck it?
Let’s work it out.
1. Find your reaction time. This will be in milliseconds but milliseconds count here. Go to : #mce_temp_url#
2. Calculate your ‘ducking’ tiime. You do this by ducking ( 30cm , at least) 10 or maybe 20 times while
a friend times you. Work out ducking time.
3. Add 1 + 2.
4. Now calculate how long it takes a golf ball to travel 10m if hit by an average player or Jason Zuback. Compare these times with you’re ducking time. Who won? You or the golf ball?
Meanwhile, even mini golf has it’s dangers:
Should Kids Wear Helmets to Play Golf?
April 22, 2009Doctors at the Medical College Georgia studied head injuries in patients under 19 between 1996 and 2002.
They found 64 of a total 2,546 had sports related injuries.
17 were cycling accidents where as 15 were golf related. Should kids be made to wear helmets playing golf asks
Medical News Today?
You can see the numbers mathspigs. Why don’t they feel right. The idea of kids playing golf in helmets seems crazy.
Firstly, kids already wear helmets riding bikes. 17 may be an improvement from pre:helmet days. But we do not
know from this data.
Now to golf. OK mathspig. Calculate how many injuries occurred other than golf and cycling.
Where may these injuries have occurred? So list some places you think kids should wear helmets to
prevent such accidents in the future?
I’m Boooored, Sir!!!!!
April 20, 2009Monkeys get bored, school kids get bored and even those ‘movers and shakers’ of the business world get bored.
THE WEEK (10 April) published an article quoting research from audio visual company
Scene Changes showing that the average time it takes the audience at a business conference
to switch off is 11 minutes. Keep in mind that the audience at a business conference is, at least,
being paid to be bored witless.
But here is the question for mathspigs?
How do you measure BOREDOM? Come up with a school based scale mathspigs. This might be 0 – 10, perhaps. Decide at what point boredom begins: 5, perhaps. Now that you are armed you might even do a survey.
eg. Mathspig Bored-Witless Scale for Seriously Bored Students
1. Look out window
2. Yawn
3. Smash face into table top
4. Drop into a coma
5. On life support
Kofi the Rat
April 14, 2009Kofi the rat has several claims to fame. ( THE WEEK 10th April 2009)
Firstly, he is educated in Britain.
Secondly, he is a sniffer rat. Weighing in at only 1.35 kg the advantage of the ‘Sniffer rat’ is
that it can detect explosives such as landmines by smell without setting them off. This seems to be
a lot cheaper and more pratical than the remote control
M60 Panther Tank used by American forces to clear landmines in Kosovo in 1997. (Below)
Meanwhile, the problem with using sniffer dogs to detect landmines is, obviously, their weight. Beagles, for instance, weigh around 14 Kg. So here is the question. Could authorities ever use a sniffer Chihuahua?????
Cheque this out!!!!
April 9, 2009The reason for doing maths, folks, is that it allows you, if and when the need arises, to act smarter than the average “smart ass”.
Mathspig lervs this cheque. But brain trust input is needed here. Advanced Mathspigs what is the real number value for this cheque?
Reading is Ooh! Aaaah! Soooo Zzzzzz!
April 7, 2009The story went around the world. The results were published in The Daily Telegraph (UK) and The Age (A2 4/4/09) among others. The research was carried out on a group of volunteers by Mindlab International at the University of Sussex. Having worked up a sweat volunteers were then asked to relax in various ways. The study conducted by Dr David Lewis concluded: Reading reduced stress levels by 68 per cent, listening to music by 61 per cent, having a cup of tea or coffee by 54 per cent, taking a stroll by 42 per cent and playing video games by 21 per cent.
Why is mathspig complaining?
STRESS??? I’LL GIVE YOU STRESS!!!! Most people think of ‘Stress’ as the physical symptoms brought on by anxiety and pressure. This type of stress is difficult to measure. You might fill in a questionnaire (‘Did your dog die?) which gives you a point score. Reducing this type of stress by 68% would be amazing! All your problems would be over. Doctors around the world would be leaping with joy. All they’d have to do to help their patients deal with stress is tell them to get two Dostoyevsky’s and a good lie down. Or even better doctors could tell their stressed patients to simply make themselves a nice cup of tea.
This study refers to the other kind of stress. Physical stress. Get physical then relax and measure the change in pulse and other things. Maybe. I can’t be sure.
SHOW ME THE NUMBERS, BUDDY! I couldn’t find the study in a known scientific journal to test research methodology. I e-mailed Mindlab with no response. Here’s the problem. If you get huffy-puffy physical then just flop in a chair and do nothing your ‘stress’ levels as measured by heart rate will improve anyway. You don’t need a book, music, etc. Heart rate dropping by 68%. Yeah! Happens all the time. Why read a book? Just sit there looking stupid; it will probably work just as well.
FLUSH FACTOR. This study deserves to be flushed down the toilet because of the small print. It was commissioned by Galaxy Chocolates who ‘surprise, surprise’ are sponsors of the Galaxy British Book Awards 2009. Until the methodology used in this study is made available to the public, it’s not worth a crumpet.
