February 14, 2012: Did I miss your blog? Math Valentines

[Maria Droujkova]

For a math Valentine, paste this into Google web search. Did you know Google is a graphing and modeling tool?
sqrt(cos(x))*cos(300x)+sqrt(abs(x))-0.7)*(4-x*x)^0.01, sqrt(6-x^2), -sqrt(6-x^2) from -4.5 to 4.5

Another nice gift comes from my blogging friend Sol Lederman, who just interviewed Keith Devlin (whose name comes up in Sandra's task comment this week). Check it out - this is a podcast:
http://wildaboutmath.com/2012/02/14/keith-devlin-inspired-by-math-1/

Out of 38 participants of the course, more than a quarter have blogs or frequently updated sites, that I know. We are awesome like this! 
Did I miss your blog? Please add to the list!

http://blogs.arcadia.edu/studyabroad/category/honors-program/laura-haeberle-14/
http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/docs/
http://collabware.wordpress.com/
http://davidwees.com/discuss
http://hyperbolicguitars.blogspot.com/
http://letsplaymath.net/
http://mathfour.com/
http://mrstevesscience.blogspot.com/
http://sebastianpanaka.tigblog.org/
http://www.artofinquiry.net/
http://www.cut-the-knot.org
http://www.naturalmath.com/blog/

LATEST UPDATE SAMPLER - SEE WHAT YOUR CLASSMATES ARE SAYING!

Wow, aren't we a diverse group!

http://blogs.arcadia.edu/studyabroad/2012/02/12/woke-up-this-morning/
Also, I did something today that surprised myself. I joined a committee! I’m now on the committee for Spring Fling at Arcadia, which will obvs be fantastic. One of my favorite bands is headlining Woodstock (the music portion of Spring Fling), so I figured it was time to leave my comfy apartment and pretend to be a person. Right now, we’re brainstorming witty slogans for the event, a job made specifically for me. I am known far and wide for my hilariously bad puns and my uber cheesy smile. So, now I just gotta wait for inspiration :D

http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/docs/
NetLogo is a programmable modeling environment for simulating natural and social phenomena. It was authored by Uri Wilensky in 1999 and has been in continuous development ever since at the Center for Connected Learning and Computer-Based Modeling.

http://collabware.wordpress.com/2011/05/04/story-of-mythoughtworks/
This is the story of myThoughtWorks – a social intranet that is turning into a hugely valuable knowledge commons and collaboration hub for ThoughtWorks. ThoughtWorks, for those of you who haven’t heard of it is a global IT consultancy providing agile and lean based systems development, consulting and transformation services to Global 1000 companies.We are about 1700 strong with offices in about 22 cities in US,UK,Germany,China,Australia,Canada,India and Brazil.

http://davidwees.com/discusshttp://davidwees.com/content/questions-about-physics-kids
 My son has some questions about the world. I wonder how often these kinds of questions are asked by children? My suspicion is that almost all children ask questions like this at some point, and that how we react to their questions has a lot to do with their willingness to experiment and figure out the answer for themselves.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsXho-BN6YE

http://hyperbolicguitars.blogspot.com/2012/02/pasta-and-mathematica.html
I have been waiting to get my copy of the book "Pasta by Design", by George L. Legendre, ever since I first read about it on the Brain Pickings site (go there! it's really cool!). It arrived today, and it's wonderful! I'm not going to describe the entire book, because I wouldn't be able to do it justice, but suffice it to say that Legendre has pulled off something really amazing - a way of appreciating pasta in all of its marvelous variety that REALLY USES MATH! To wit: each of the 92 different pasta descriptions include a picture, a "phylogenetic description" (along with a "phylogenetic tree" of pastas), the types of recipes it is most likely to be found in, and a set of parametric equations (!!!) that, if plotted using the appropriate software, will generate a diagram of the pasta in question.

 

http://letsplaymath.net/2012/02/13/attention-bloggers-we-want-you/
Activities, games, lessons, hands-on fun — the Math Teachers at Play blog carnival would love to feature your article about mathematics from preschool to precollege level (through the first year of calculus). You can submit your article online, or email John directly to make sure he gets your submission.
Deadline: This Wednesday night!
The carnival will be published Friday at Math Hombre.

http://mathfour.com/math-around-us/the-math-of-weight-watchers-points-plus
Laura over at Math For Grownups wrote an article on the math behind the points system that Weight Watchers uses.
It was interesting. But since I didn’t do Weight Watchers, I merely found it a fun novelty. Until…
I joined Weight Watchers last week.

http://mrstevesscience.blogspot.com/2012/01/what-do-you-want-your-learners-to-learn.html
These are the questions for this weeks P2PU class
Who are you trying to help?
D. Rillin Kill Age: 6 (going on 16)
Always wants to know why.  Finds the worksheets and seemingly arbitrary rules boring.  She does not understand math and why we invert and multiply.  Enjoys drawing and chatting with friends. Likes games and puzzles.  Her friend Sadie is home schooled and she wonders if that would work for here too, but her Mom worries about where she will get the material and books to teach her. 

Grandma Moses is concerned about her grandkids: Bela Bartok who loves music and composing, Ira Caull who loves storytelling and animation and her grandson Horatio Algebra (location unknown, but could be any number of places) who really likes math.  Her village just received a bunch of these new fangled laptops and she is wondering how her kids can use them to learn and better their lives.

 

http://sebastianpanaka.tigblog.org/post/3110203
Young students used Skype to invite tourists from abroad, invited a village to participate, and celebrated the brotherhood festival of Kerala.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJ4Fo1iyHOQ

http://www.artofinquiry.net/sample-problems
Group 2 ( 9-10 year olds)
- Is it possible to put 5 checkers in such a way that each checker touches 3 others?
- Alcuin's "grain problem" : A head of household has 20 servants. He ordered them to be given 20 sacks of grain as follows: men will receive 3 sacks, women 2 sacks, and the children, half of a sack. How many men, women and children are there, if there is at least one of each?

http://www.cut-the-knot.org/Curriculum/Geometry/TriangulationDual.shtml
In a 1975 paper, G. H. Meisters posed and proved the following
Two Ears Theorem
Except for triangles, every Jordan polygon has at least two non-overlapping ears.

http://www.naturalmath.com/blog/good-calculation-games/
Good calculation games
Here are games that work well with arithmetic tasks. By “work well” I mean:
Mechanics provide players enough agency and freedom to develop tactics, so that the overall activity is still a game (rather than a quiz)
Mechanics produce strong, pleasant flow, as evidenced by popularity
The overall feeling of the game is vaguely mathematical (this one is hard to define and requires human judgment with some artistic license)