In our first meeting of fall 2021, Sarah and Amy led through the group through an exploration of the ways of cutting a shape into pieces.
Continue reading “Representing Fractions”Author: Eric Appleton
Sequences
Sarah and I have been meeting once a week to teach ourselves some basic coding. Our first project was a function game. We are currently working on another game involving sequences, which got us thinking about the sequences in this meeting.
Sarah started this meeting by asking the group to consider the following prompt.
A pile of coconuts
Sophie led us through the following problem from the Museum of Math’s weekly puzzle during COVID. Sign up for emails from MoMath.
PUZZLE: Coconut Classic
Five men and a monkey, marooned on an island, collect a pile of coconuts to be divided equally the next morning. During the night, however, one of the men decides he’d rather take his share now. He tosses one coconut to the monkey and removes exactly 1/5 of the remaining coconuts for himself. A second man does the same thing, then the third, fourth, and fifth. The following morning the men wake up together, toss one more coconut to the monkey, and divide the rest equally.What’s the least original number of coconuts needed to make this whole scenario possible?
Mind-Benders for the Quarantined! (Museum of Math, NYC)
We had a lot of interesting ideas and shared a few strategies, but we didn’t get to a solution.
Continue reading “A pile of coconuts”Rainbow Squares
Warm-up:
We started with a quick game of online Simon Says.
It was okay, but a little clunky. Usha suggested a different kind of activity where video on means yes and video off means no. Read a series of statements. Here are a few I brainstormed: Winter is my favorite season of the year. I love ice cream. I am excited to be back in school. I want to go to college. (You probably have better examples.) End with a statement everyone can say yes to…
Continue reading “Rainbow Squares”Sums of Consecutive Numbers (follow-up)
In this meeting, we explored the sums of consecutive numbers (inspired by a CAMI meeting led by Usha Kotelawala in June 2017). The meeting is also based on a two-day lesson I led with the support of other teachers during summer 2020 problem-solving meetings with CUNY adult education students.
Before the meeting, I shared this post on the CAMI email list:
Number Pyramids
In this meeting, we explored Henri Piccioto’s number pyramid puzzles through notice/wonder, generating questions for problem-solving and additional puzzles for students.
At the beginning of the meeting, we shared some favorite sources of puzzles we like to use with students, include Which One Doesn’t Belong, Sometimes, Always, Never, and Open Middle.
Then I introduced Number Pyramids. Thank you to Henri Piccioto and his amazing web site of math resources. Here is the sequence we used:
Factor Graphs
Sarah Lonberg-Lew of the Adult Numeracy Network and SABES joined us from Gloucester, MA to lead this meeting with me (honestly, I did very little). We explored a diagram that Play With Your Math calls factor graphs. They got the idea from Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension, by the mathematician and educator Matt Parker. (Check out Numberphile for some of his videos.)
The week before the meeting we sent out this teaser:
Modeling the Coronavirus
Usha took advantage of the fact that we are all sitting in front of computers to lead us through a modeling exercise in Excel.
After some spreadsheet basics, Usha led us through a meeting in which worked in groups to think about modeling some aspect of the COVID19 outbreak.
Continue reading “Modeling the Coronavirus”For the COVID19 virus, pose 3 specific quantitative questions, the answers to which would be useful in your role as health commissioner. Try to consider questions that can be dealt with mathematically.
Decimal representations
Have you ever thought about why some fractions turn into decimal representations that go on and on, while others terminate?
Andrew started by describing two kinds of decimal representations of fractions:
Dividing a 2-digit number by the sum of its digits
Three very different visual solutions were shared in response to a problem about dividing 2-digit numbers.
This was our first online meeting (made necessary by the COVID-19 outbreak). It was a great distraction and made it possible for Adult Numeracy Network friends to join us from the Hudson Valley, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin. Our meetings for the next few months will almost certainly be online, so join us if you’re able.
The problem for this meeting came from Math with Bad Drawings and @mathsjem before that:
Continue reading “Dividing a 2-digit number by the sum of its digits”Nice little puzzle pic.twitter.com/qh7FCkcjLN
— Jo Morgan (@mathsjem) October 22, 2019