In December soccer teams with the strongest world rankings were chosen to play in the once-every-4-years World Cup. The World Cup competition has just begun and will continue through July 15th. The team rankings are calculated in a pretty complex…
On Thursday, June 21st, at 06:07 am EST, the Earth’s North Pole will be tilted as far towards the Sun as it will ever be in the year. This marks the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere and…
Thank you Mother and Father for all of those diapers – Which is a better deal, cloth or disposable diapers? How much did you cost your parents in diapers? In the future how much could your kid’s diapers cost? Help…
This activity is the first in our series on mental math tricks. Let your students develop their own individual way of mentally multiplying by 0.5, 5, 50, 500, and so on. We have a little practice and a requirement for…
Justify has won the Triple Crown. He’s the 13th horse to ever win all three races … Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and the Belmont Stakes. Amazing! How do you calculate compound probability? Skip the betting odds and deal only with the…
The NBA court has a 3-point line that separates how many points a player will earn for his team by making a basket from outside of that line. Here’s a simplistic picture of 1/2 of an NBA full court. Teams…
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…
After chlorination, it has been hard to measure the quantity of pollutants in pool water. A Canadian chemist, Xing-Fang Li, has found a marker for urine that chlorine doesn’t disguise. In this activity, students calculate volume of several pools, change that…
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…
This weekend is the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markel. This will be quite an event and we can expect it to dominate the media. What have you heard about the event? What interests you? The mathematics in this…
Justify won the Preakness – Can he win the Triple Crown? This past Saturday was the running of the Preakness Stakes Thoroughbred horse race in Baltimore, Maryland. The Preakness is the second major race for 3-year old thoroughbreds to run…
You can order a ton of combos at Chipotle. They advertise that there are 65,000 ways to order their meals. Do you think that is correct?
In 2017 Russel Westbrook had one of the most dominating seasons ever, averaging a trip!e double per game. James Harden lit up the league in 2018 and is considered the favorite for MVP. Or what about Stephen Curry and his…
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…