All posts by Josh Seamon

Star Project Update 1

All of my students now know how to fold the building block piece that can be used to make a 60-piece star, or many other shapes. Here are the three stars I’ve built from the pieces my students have folded.

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Their homework over winter break is to experiment with putting the pieces together and to see if they can construct their own 60-piece star!

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Microsoft dropped by!

The Microsoft Surface media team visited my BC & Multivariable Calculus class today to do some filming for Surface promo materials. The class went really well and I got to fold (!) in some Origami into my lesson. I’ll be sure to post links to the final promo product(s) as soon as they air.

Here’s my screen recording from class:

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:

Hyperbolic Paraboloids

One of my favorite surfaces is the hyperbolic paraboloid. So, of course, all of my students need to know how to fold one from a square sheet of paper. Last night my BC & Multi students practiced their folding skills and today in class their quiz was to fold one on their own without the instructions. They certainly impressed me with their folding skills!

Here are the instruction (PDF). Try folding one!

Their homework creations:

photo 1

Folding quiz:

photo 2

The hyperbolic paraboloid lineup!

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A family:

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The hallway bulletin board:

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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