It’s almost summer in Australia. In Melbourne we’ve had floods, mosquito – mozzie- numbers surge and, last Wednesday, I nearly stood on a Tiger Snake that was escaping the floods near the Yarra River!
This post, however, is really a PR exercise for sharks. We fear them. We’re horrified by the thought of being eaten alive!!!. We only have to hear the soundtrack from JAWS to feel the fear. Then we see news footage like the attack below and think it happens all the time. Look at that fin. It’s enormous! But sharks are not THAT dangerous. We really need to look at the statistics to understand the level of threat. See below.
Why do we fear sharks? Look at the numbers. REALLY. Show your students. What about stairs??? Quad bikes? Chairs? Bees? That’s when you should feel the fear!!! We are irrational beings. This is why we need maths. We can make rational decisions using maths. There is also a safety message here. The maths speaks for itself. We won’t hammer it.
THE MATHS:
There is lots of maths you can do with these tables.
Bar Graphs
Pie Charts
Ratios (What’s the ratio of death by Snake to Quad Bike?)
Fractions (Show death by jet ski to falling down stairs as a fraction)
Percentages
Powers to the base 10. How many deaths occur in each country per 100,000 or 1 x 105 head of population for, say, Quad bikes or ATVs? We can use these numbers to compare death rates and find out how dangerous riding a Quad bike is in each country.
It’s Autumn in UK & FALL in the USA so it’s the perfect time for a little bit of outdoor math for Grade 3-5 with AUTUMN leaves. Of course, you don’t need FALL LEAVES for this exercise, but it is colorful.
This fab idea comes from Juliet Robertson, an outdoor education consultant in Scotland. Her blog Creative star learning is one of the most inspiring outdoor maths blogs you will find.
According to The Guinness Book of Records the largest chocolate Easter Egg went on display at Le Acciaierie Shopping Centre, in Cortenuova, Italy, on 2011.
The Foo Fighters play a stadium concert in Geelong TONIGHT. This is the first stadium concert in Australia in 2 years!!!!! Dave Grohl, the FF’s guitarist, is a legend. He played drums for Nirvana and is considered by many to be the best drummer in the world. Meanwhile, Taylor Hawkins, the drummer for the Foo Fighters, is also considered one of the best rock drummers ever.
In honour of this auspicious occasion and to work out what might be going on inside these rock legends’ heads, I’m reposting (below) the math article about drummers’ brains.
In a 2011 article in the New Yorker Burkhard Bilger wrote about neuroscientist David Eagleman and his research into time and the brain especially drummers’ brains.
Some of the drummers he has interviewed and/or tested include William Champion of Cold Play, Brian Eno of Roxy Music and Larry Mullen, Jnr of U2.
Eno, on keyboards (above) who was working on a U2 album, talks about Mullen’s amazing timing. They were using a click-track (computer generated beat) when mMullen complained he couldn’t drum to it. ENO adjusted the beat. Mullen was happy.
Here are some drum beats provided by Justin Alan Cox so you can get your timing right:
60 bpm
80 bpm
100 bpm
120 bpm
Drummer Maths:
How Cool a Drummer are you?
Pick a beat and see how accurate you can beat tempo. Time how long it takes you to beat out 60, 80, 100 or 120 drum beats using a pencil. It should, obviously, take one minute if you are an ENO or a Mullens.
What was the difference in time in seconds?
But drummers like Eno, Grohl and Hawkins have other problems!!!!!
Bilger’s conclusion:
‘Like perfect pitch, which dooms the possessor to hear every false note and flat car horn, perfect timing may just makes a drummer more sensitive to the world’s arrhythmias and repeated patterns, Eagleman said—to the flicker of computer screens and fluorescent lights. Reality, stripped of an extra beat in which the brain orchestrates its signals, isn’t necessarily a livelier place. It’s just filled with badly dubbed television shows.’
1. Quad Bike or ATV: In 2007, 107 children younger than 16 were killed on ATVs. 2. Cyclists 3. choke on vomit 4. Cats, cows, horses, pigs, raccoons. 5. Bees, wasps 6.PWC or Jet Ski 7. Lightning 8. Xmas tree fires 9. Snowboard 10. Venomous Spider 11. Scorpions 12. Venomous Snakes , lizards. 13.Crocs & gators 14. Shark 
Mathspig Blog 
