We used to see holiday sales right after Thanksgiving but, surprisingly, holiday shopping has already begun. Sales are advertised everywhere. Students will be able to add some understanding and analysis to those shopping trips after calculating savings in dollars and…
Gonzaga just won the finals of this year’s March Madness tournament. Still, which NCAA teams have had the best basketball programs over the years. Students decide which stats count towards the “Greatest March Madness Program”. Once students decide their “best program ever,” challenge them use a different criteria than they originally used.
Engage your students in percents as they get excited about March Madness. Is getting a higher seed really an advantage? Use 30 years of data to help determine for which seeds it makes sense to pick an upset. Finally, students determine a general strategy for picking games in the first round.
We have 6 activities on Martin Luther King and the movement to a more fair and equal representation of Black lives in America. A timeline of KIng’s life; a timeline of the social justice movement; the history of Jackie Robinson; data on which monuments in the National Mall are most visited; a study of crowd counting; and an examination of the recent changes in the Bears Ears Monument size and the reasons for that change.
On Saturday, January 2nd, 2021, Earth will be as close as it gets to the Sun during its orbit. Shouldn’t that make this the warmest time of the year? In this activity students become familiar with the terms perihelion and aphelion as they calculate…
Note: This is a remake of our 2014 and 2017 activities “How Much Does a Lego Cost?”. How much could the Roman Colosseum Lego set cost ? Student first make a guess and then think about what information would be…
When shopping next Friday, students will be able to add some understanding and analysis to the trip after calculating savings in dollars and percents with this timely investigation.
Updated activity for Covid 19 appropriate Thanksgivings.
Students change decimals to fractions,
calculate ingredient measures for various-sized Thanksgiving servings,
explain their thinking in calculating these figures,
and judge how many servings could be created from 7½ pounds of potatoes.
We found big mixed bags of candy at really good prices … we think. Students are asked to decide which would be the best deal and the worst deal on candy. They can also create their own mixed bags. This activity…
Appalachian Trail Needs – Calculating the needs and rates involved in enduring this 2,168 mile trek.
Steepness and Fall Hiking – Use a little mathematics about percent grade change in hiking.
Two activities to help celebrate National Donut Day
How many donuts is that = huge box of donuts to approximate.
How have donuts changed = torus volume measurements, formula intuition, and algebraic transformation of one formula into a second formula.
This World Record Snickers Bar was created in late January at the Waco, Texas Mars Wrigley Plant. What proportions would be an accurate cross sections of this monster bar? How many Mars Wrigley workers would this feed? How are your calculations different from what was published? How must their calculations have differed from yours?
I checked my data usage for the month. What do you notice and wonder? What could my data plan be? How much have I used? How much will I have used by the end of the month? Is this…
A comparison of gasoline in Greece, priced at Euros per liter, and gas in Massachusetts at dollars per gallon. Price and liquid volume conversion using unit fractions.
Students examine the ads and decide what is and isn’t said. Do the ads give enough information to make a decision? Which is the better deal? How do you know?