How to Teach Maths … funny … funny … funny … BBC 4 Podcast

The BBC 4 THE INFINITE MONKEY CAGE podcast How to Teach Maths hosted by Brian Cox and Robin Ince is soooo funny and informative. This is not just for Maths lovers. Included on the panel are comedian Sara Pascoe and the very numerate Prof Hannah Fry, maths comedian Matt Parker and statistician Prof David Spiegelhalter. 

It is worth listening to Prof Brian Cox say he wasn’t so good at maths at school. But he loved PHYSICS. Prof Cox studied as a mature age student!!!!!!!!!

Find Podcast here:

How to TEACH MATHS WEBSiTE BBC 4 here

How to TEACH MATHS PODBEAN here

How to TEACH MATHS TUNEin here

How to TEACH MATHS Apple Podcasts here

Dangerous Math: Death by Snake, Spider, Quad bike, Kangaroo, Raccoon and Vomit

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.

……..Population Data 2022: 

……..Aust…26 million = 26 x 10⁶

……..USA…332 million = 332 x 10⁶

……..Canada…38 million = 38 x 10⁶

……..UK…67 million = 67 x 10⁶

But we’re doing this for the SHARKS!!!

1. Cyclists. 2. emergency lanes 3. fell off a chair 4.QUAD BIKES. 5. Horse, donkey. 6. buses 7. Cow, bull. 8. ice skates, skis or skateboards. 9. Venemous snake 10. kangaroo 11. bee 12. emu 13. Jet ski 14. Shark 15. Crocodile

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

1. ATV Quad Bike 2. Canoe  3. Kayak 4. PWC or Jet Ski  5. Unpowered inflatable 6. Avalanches or landslides. 7. Lightning 8. Toboggan 9. Moose –Car collision 10. Bears (All Nth America) 11. Rattle Snake 12. Wolves 13. Shark

1. falling down stairs.  2. Cyclists.  3. Choke on vomit   4. Falling off Chairs 5.  QUAD BIKE or ATV 6. Buses 7. Struck by cow, horse, other mammal 8. hornets, wasps, bees. 9. PWC or jet ski .10. Parachutists. 11. Skateboards, ice skates, skis 12. Canoe. 13. Shark 

Halloween Math: Witches vs Zombies 2

 

Halloween Math : Witches vs Zombies 1

There has been a real world Witches Vs Zombie Fight.

The witches of the Haunted House in Salem, Massachusetts, are at war with the Zombies of The Nightmare Factory nearby. A witch tripped a Zombie who was wearing a straight jacket!!!! And … read it for yourself in the Daily Mail, UK.

Links: Top Grossing Horror Movies

Blair Witch Project Budget here.

DART vs ASTEROID: Middle School Math

DART is a test

of NASA’s planetary defence plans.

AND IF YOU GOOGLE ……..

 DOUBLE ASTEROID REDIRECTION TEST

                                       Guess what?

The DART(Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission was launched on Nov. 23, 2021, atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

It is the size of a small vending machine and it has been travelling through space for 10 months.

Outdoor Maths Adventures: Middle School

As the weather improves – Spring in Melbourne, my city & Fall in USA & Autumn in the UK – it is an ideal time to take math outdoors. Here are some fab exercises for Middle School Math.

Lego Man soccer fields will vary in size depending on the height of each player picked by each student. This does your head in. It is really challenging maths!

 

McGill Uni link here.

Don’t forget to throw in Mathspig’s lame protractor jokes.

You’ll find full calculations at the Maths is Fun blog.

You’ll find more fab outdoor junior and middle school maths activities at the terrific Maths and Movement blog.

Some students will discover their co-ordinate point is not on the grid. Students should then work out that they will need a different scale for the y-axis. You can get more inspiration at the Stand Again blog.

Razzle-Dazzle them with Middle School Math that is, like, WOW!

 

10 Quick & Quirky Ways to Make the Math Classroom Rock!

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1. Tell a Story: Life, Death, and Geometry

This is middle school maths at its best. To understand Wild Fires you must understand the angle of a slope. REQUIREMENTS: Just this story and a white or blackboard to show how the fire speed changes with the slope angle. 

Background Story

On 5^th August 1949 Wag Dodge was dropped by parachute with 14 other firefighters into Mann Gulch, a steep-sided gully in a Montana pine forest. Firefighters who parachute in to put out small blazes started by lightning are called Smoke Jumpers. As they worked their way down the sides of the gully the breeze was blowing away from them. But the wind soon shifted. This produced an updraft, which increases the speed of the fire front. The 15 Smoke Jumpers turned and started running for their lives uphill.

What you have to know

Heat rises and so there is a Chimney Effect pushing the fire uphill. The rule of thumb used by firefighters is:

Each 10º increase in slope, the fire front speed doubles. So a fire front traveling at 60 kph (37 mph) becomes a fire front traveling at 120kph (75 mph) moving up a slope of 10º.

What happened to the Smoke Jumpers?

When the fire front changed direction Wag Dodge and 14 other Smoke Jumpers found themselves running for their lives up a steep slope. What did Wag do next?

ANS: Here’s the amazing thing. Wag realised he could not outrun the fire at that point. So he stopped, took off his backpack, took out some MATCHES, and lit a fire in the grassy patch in front of him. Just before the firewall hit he threw himself face down on the burnt patch. He survived. The other 14 firefighters did not. You will find maths exercises here: METRIC UNITS and USA UNITS.

 

Requirements: SmartBoard to Project this link.

Try it first. You might be surprised.

 

3. Urban Myth Busted

Requirements: This story.

Goldfish Memory This is what Epidemiologists do. They find out if there are statistics to support the theory. These mathematicians have been providing vital information during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

According to the ABC news, this myth was busted by a 15-year-old Adelaide schoolboy named Rory Stokes. He fed his goldfish near a Red Lego brick. The fish started anticipating food near the brick. He took it away and replaced it several weeks later. The fish remembered the red brick!!! More here.

Other maths myths to check out:

Chewing food 32 times before swallowing helps you lose weight. Here.

You must drink 8 glasses of water a day. Here.

You are 6 degrees of separation from anyone in the world. Here.

It takes 43 muscles to frown and only 17 to smile. Here.

 

4. Beat this! Drum Rates in BPM.

Requirements: A pencil and a timer on a phone.

Can students manage a drumbeat to popular songs? Here are some songs with their BPMs (Beats per minute listed). 

Tones and I     Dance Monkey  98 BPM.

The Rubens  Live In Life  104 BPM.

Lady Gaga      Bad Romance     118  BPM

……………….Just Dance          119   BPM

Flume   Rushing Back   176  BPM   (Try the middle of the track. It varies)

Panic! At the Disco      186 BPM   (Recommended by Jog.FM for jogging)

More DRUM BEATS and a story about Drummers’ Brains here.

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5...MatHoudini

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Requirements: Phonebook.

Read the instructions at this link. Very simple. And you can amaze the students. Or Vice Versa. A student can amaze a maths teacher.

 

6.  Can you make a Square Bubble?

Requirements: pipe cleaners or stick cube and detergent and a bucket with water.

All ages love this exercise.

How? Read the link here.

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7. Photo Scavenger Hunt

Challenge: Students use a smartphone to take 5 mathsy photos for homework. Ideas here.

However, start in the maths room. Look for parallel lines, angles, rectangles, spheres, parabolas (not in the textbooks). See parabola below.

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8. Barcode Maths

Requirements: A product with a barcode.

Read this link and check the barcode.

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9. Secret Code

Requirements: Box of matches, an accomplice.

Read this link and amaze the class.

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10. Rolling coin Paradox & the Radius 

Requirements: 2 large coins. 20c in Australia, Half-$ USA or 25p UK.

Read this link first. It’s so counterintuitive.

Stranger Things Math 2: Now You are the Galton Ball

Mathspig has become obsessed with the Galton Board since watching ELEVEN dropping discs into the peg board on STRANGER THINGS 4.

Now thanks to David Butler, University of Adelaide, you can turn your middle school class into Galton Balls. You can find 100 randomly generated instruction sheets for each human Galton Ball at David’s website. (Link above)

Ideally, you would have 3,000 students to do this activity. But the class exercise ends with something approximating a Normal Distribution or Bell Curve constructed from video tap casettes. And the NOrMal Distribution is spooky.

More on the Galton Board Math here.

Stranger Things Math: Eleven and the Galton Board

NOTE: Michael (above), who seems appropriately scary for this post, uses a commercial Galton Board.  It has one flaw. Many balls feed into the grid at once and this will change the pathways taken because the balls bump into one another. The best results come from dropping in the balls one at a time. If you had the patience to drop in 3,000 balls one at a time.

FOR THE LONGEST KICK or THROW in Football you need this MATHS

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The following maths is suitable for Year 9+

but can be presented to lower grades just to show

maths is cool!