Category: Movies and Entertainment

It’s opening weekend for Barbie

This activity lets students express their excitement (or lack of) in seeing this new movie, study the data of previously successful movies, and predict whether Barbie will be a financial success.

Mother’s Day ideas (14 activities)

Updated! How much do we spend on Mother’s Day – Use the Mother’s Day event to engage your students in approximating, reasoning, and investigating as students estimate how much is spent in the United States for Mother’s Day. For what…

Before the holidays (16 activities)

We have tons (well, 16) of activities to bring to your class in this last week before the holiday break. Movies, science, art, cooking, economics, weather and the logic of calendars. Enjoy!

Buy, buy, buy and ship (8 ideas)

Here comes Black Friday, Small business Saturday, Cyber Monday and Giving Tuesday.  It’s a crazy time of year.  Use all of that shopping to educate your students about good deals and how shoppers can be fooled. Is this really 70%…

Where should I drop my puck

Act 1 – Give students time to view the game board above or give them our one-page activity. The above picture is larger when you click on it. Ask students for their gut reaction about which slot would give them…

The odds of horse race betting

Rich Strike surprised everyone at the Kentucky Derby horse race in early May by moving from 18th place at the half-way mark (out of 20 horses) to winning the race. Churchill Downs, the track in Kentucky where the race took place, paid out $81 for every dollar that was bet for Rich Strike to win.  How do they figure that?

Mental math tricks – part 2

36 x 25 = 900     480 x 25 =12,000    924 x 2.5 = 2,310 Can you see any tricks for doing these calculations in your head? The activity: ImpressYourParents-part2.pdf

Winter Olympic Activities (7 activities)

Curling – Friction, score-keeping, trajectory and weirdness are the main concepts in this activity.  Curling is not a well-understood sport but the science and strategy are easily understood and enjoyed. Big Air Snowboarding – Some of your students may be officianados…

Spider-Man continues

How much did it cost to make?
How much will it gross?
Is the Spider-Man phenomena a guarantee for success?
How would you compare all of the Spider-Man movies?

Ravensburger huge puzzle

Students surmise what the difficulty of a jig saw puzzle entails and use rate calculations to estimate finishing times. They try to confirm whether doubling the number of pieces really increases puzzle completion time by a multiple of four.

Movies and the upcoming Oscars

Compounded percent change; central tendencies; the weight of Rapunzel’s 70 feet of hair; Godzilla’s height by comparison; how to measure the profitability of a movie series; most appropriate graphical representations; line of best fit; and more …