Category Archives: Math News

Links of the Week

Today might not be a school day for the kids here at Williston, but the faculty is hard at work having a blast at our professional development day! The department is currently connection in small subject groups. Also, here are some of the resources I shared this morning:

Article (Mashable): 10 Rockstar Teachers on Twitter
Article (RPI alum magazine): Solving Problems
Podcast (Planet Money): Will a computer decide whether you get your next job?
Puzzle MANIA (MIT): 2014 Mystery Hunt
Website: Google Glass in Music Education
Video (Edward Frenkel): Why do people hate mathematics?
Resource (Website): Lymboo
Article (EdTech): 7 video tutorials on how to create posters and infographics using piktochart

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The Star Project

Over the past week my BC & Multivariable Calculus class has begun their journey working through the wonderful land of three dimensional space. In order to get my students to think more deeply about the dimensions they are now operating within, I have been working Origami into my lessons. I started with hyperbolic paraboloids and now have just taught them the first few skills they will need to create their own 60-piece stars.

Voila!
Voila!

They now know how to make the pieces and over the next few days I will be helping them figure out how to fit them together into a closed, 60-piece star! Here’s what the whole process looks like:

Sleep Stats Summary

Here’s what Mrs. Baldwin has to say about the sleep data she collected over the last 6 weeks:

“As good statisticians, we of course recognize that our data are being collected through voluntary sampling. This is less of a problems when the data are easy to gather and we give several opportunities for people to participate. The data should represent the Williston community fairly well, but likely underrepresent faculty and students who don’t find themselves on the Math floor of the Schoolhouse.

We can see that our community of Williston students and faculty shows a lot of variation. We have a low of one hour of sleep and a high of 13 hours. A typical member of the community gets about 7 hours with the observations becoming less and less common as they extend above or below that. Since there are about as many high extremes as there are low extremes and there is a single peak, we call the shape of the picture “unimodal” and “symmetric” (we could fold the graph in half and get about the same picture on either side). Our observations about the shape suggest that the underlying distribution could very well be our good friend The Normal Distribution. We’ll see you again soon, Normal Distribution, bye for now…”

How many hours of sleep did you get last night?

Sleep Stats - Final