In this investigation students calculate the percentage of the U.S. population (current and historically) that are enrolled in K-12 schools. They are asked to draw conclusions from these variations. Finally, they use their calculations to predict the number of enrolled…
Catching a productive meteor shower can be a stunning experience. On the evenings and mornings of August 11th and 12th there could be a very good show. A nearly new moon will leave the night sky dark. Depending on the…
These Aussi tomatoes (the tomato on the left of all of the tomatoes) are huge. How much do you guess one weighs? Can you figure it out?
All the ice cream that you can eat for only 10 cents! Wow, that’s a great deal! How great a deal was that? The history of the Dairy Queen franchise began with this ad in Illinois in 1938. I know…
Can you imagine being stuck in the dark for such a long time? How do all of the numbers play out? In this activity, students get a chance to talk about the experience of this ordeal while calculating usual rates…
Act One: Check out this beach towel! What do you wonder? What would you like to know? Miami artist, Misael Soto (pictured on the left below), created this giant art project to make a statement about people sharing territory at the beach.…
Fanatics is an online sportswear retailer that has promised to accept jersey returns if your chosen player makes a team switch. In this activity student try to calculate how much this “Jersey Assurance” program will actually cost the company. This…
Bats eat mosquitoes … lots of mosquitoes. Students compare a bat’s weight to how much he can consume in one night. They calculate how much they would need to eat to consume a comparable proportion of food. We compare the…
Celebrate the NBA and NBA Finals by involving your students in interpreting what can be deduced from graphical representations. In this activity students consider scatter plots, circle graphs, bar graphs, Venn Diagrams and the concept of mean. To start the…
This Monday Americans will celebrate Memorial Day. Who are we honoring? How did the holiday come about? Isn’t Memorial Day usually on May 30th? Students learn a little about the history of the holiday, analyze the possibilities and patterns for when…
The Volcano Kilauea is continuing to spew molten lava and ash on the island of Hawai’i. This volcano is on the tip of the southern most Hawaiian Island. Is that significant? In this activity students note the descending ages of…
Mother’s Day by the numbers – Mother’s Day is right around the corner and this means big business for the greeting card and floral industries. Let your students practice averages, percents, and large numbers while they analyze the statistics on Mother’s…
Game one of the 2013 Stanley Cup between the Bruins and Blackhawks went into 3 overtimes. People stayed up way too late to watch the conclusion. The teams played 112 minutes and eight seconds of game time. The game went…
Can you tell from its opening weekend how much the new movie, Avengers: Infinity War, might earn in theaters? This activity can be used anytime and is especially timely when there is a new blockbuster movie released. We’ve left blank…
Recently, pilots of a Boeing 787 testing a new set of Rolls Royce engines, fulfilled their FAA required long-distance endurance requirement in an unusual way. The Boeing pilots decided to have a little fun and fly a flight path that traced…