Category Archives for Movies and Entertainment
Do the “Best” Movies Make More Money?
Do the “Best” movies (the ones that are nominated for an Academy Award for best picture) make the most money? Ten movies are nominated each year. Students compare the votes that the last 20 nominated movies received with their worldwide … Continue reading
Glowing Rectangles
Did you ever notice that people spend lots of time staring at their screens (glowing rectangles). Kids spend hours each day using television, computers, mobile devices and so on. Use that interest to motivate your student’s analysis of screen ratios. … Continue reading
Harry Potter
The last of the Harry Potter movies was released this summer and the movie was a huge hit at the box office. We take a look back at the Harry Potter series and ask kids to analyze actual Harry Potter … Continue reading
Farwell to Oprah
Time to say goodbye to the Oprah Winfrey show. Involve your students in a little real life and entertainment life comparison in Brian’s latest investigation that asks for estimations, fractional parts, percents, and future estimations (patterns) of entertainer’s salaries. Common … Continue reading
Pirates of the Caribbean
The fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie opens this Friday, May 20th. Your students might be looking forward to seeing this movie and motivated to understand the investment expenses and profit expectations. Brian’s data and questions will help them judge … Continue reading
Everything Royal Wedding
Friday, April 29, 2011, at 11:00 a.m. will be the much talked about wedding of Brittain’s Prince William and Kate Middleton. Engage and inform your students in an investigation of percents, proportions, exchange rates, time zones and Royal memorabilia. everything-royal-wedding.doc … Continue reading
Movie tickets prices over time
In this investigation, Brian looks at the changes in movie ticket prices over the last 30 years. Using his scatter plot (or his data) students analyze rates of change, make predictions about the future ticket costs, guesses about past costs … Continue reading
Season ten American Idol
Let your student study American Idol viewing figures over the last nine seasons. Students compare historical season premier and season finale audience size in several different ways to determine which event has had higher viewership. Students consider outliers and judge … Continue reading
Highest grossing holiday movies
Kids analyze actual holiday movie data. They round, estimate, compare, use percents, consider the most appropriate graphical representation and graph data. xmas_movies.pdf
Rapunzel
image drawn by Marisa Hopkins Disney’s animated movie, Tangled, comes out next week. We’ve shown students some of the Brothers Grimm’s original fairy tale along with giving them a glimpse at the physics involved in the animation of Rapunzel’s hair. … Continue reading
Monopoly
In the board game, Monopoly, does a property’s distance from GO relate to the cost of its rent when you land on it ? Students create scatter plots using Brian’s spread sheet which lists properties, their distances from GO, and … Continue reading
The growth of Facebook
The story of Facebook is an amazing tale about a young man and the fantastic popularity of his creation. Let your students examine the history and evolution of the Facebook phenomenon as they chart the site’s user numbers and calculate … Continue reading
ipad
Everyone is talking about the new Apple creation. Use Brian’s activity to analyze its costs, price per GB, and sales predictions. ipad.pdf
