Prime Factor Stacks

Carol Cashion, teacher of math and other high school equivalency subjects at the New York City College of Technology in Brooklyn, and I co-led this meeting. In October, I observed Carol’s class when she introduced factors using blocks. I was interested to see how the approach opened up a tangible way of playing with factors and concepts such as greatest common factor. In our teachers’ circle, Carol explained her lesson plan and then we explored “prime factor stacks” as a problem-posing and problem-solving method. -Eric

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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.

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.

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