Hugo teaches math

The first stop I had when reading this article, was about the connection of the words line and linen. We often forget how crucial the concept of a line is in geometry. Sometimes we can even think of a circle as a line that we've curved around. We manipulate the line to create other shapes, just as we manipulate the linen to make clothes. Also hearing about how people in the past knew about 3-4-5 triangles is quite interesting. A bit off topic, but also the cubic watermelons costing $200 is an insane price even for something as novel as that. The second stop I had was when they were talking about the grids in Saskatchewan. From my knowledge, I always thought that Saskatchewan was a very flat province, so one would think a grid system would work just fine. But factoring in the curvature of the Earth is something that did not occur to me. This got me thinking about BC, we have so many mountains here that a grid system would definitely be less efficient. In regards to indigenizing ...

Since there are 1000 bottles and 10 rats, I thought to split the work evenly at the start. Each rat drinks 100 bottles. This means that 1 of the rats will die, which means that the poisoned bottle will be in that 100 set of bottles the rat was assigned. So now we have 9 rats left to test 100 bottles. Now set 1 bottle aside and have the rats test 99 of the bottles. Each of the 9 rats will test 11 bottles each. If no rats die, then we somehow amazingly picked out the poisoned bottle. But most likely one of the rats will die, and we will know that in their group of 11 bottles there will be one that is poisoned. So now we have 8 rats remaining to test 11 bottles. Set 3 bottles aside so that we have 8 bottles and 8 rats. Each rat will drink one, if they all live then the poisoned bottle is in the group of 3, if not then whichever bottle the dead rat drank from is poisoned. If they all live then we have 8 rats to test 3 bottles, which is trivial. Let 3 rats each drink a bottle, whoever dies ...

Unit Plan Draft #2

Unit Plan Draft

The examples of using first/second person pronouns in math textbooks never occurred to me. I'm still not quite convinced that this plays an important role on the student's learning experience. As a student, I don't think I would be able to tell the difference. But as a teacher, maybe I could see why some one could reason this. The language of uncertainty within textbooks were frustrating as a student, because math is usually a subject with specific answers. As a teacher, this uncertainty is good because it engages the student more and provokes inquiry within the students. As with most people, I feel that textbooks are a tool that must be utilized correctly by the teacher/students. If you're teaching straight from the textbook, then why do you need to be there? Students could just read the textbook at home or find a source online to learn. As a teacher, you have to engage them, not just teach from the textbook. A textbook is definitely a powerful tool, but it needs to ...

My first thought when I read this problem was that one of the weights must be equal to 1 gram. This must be true because in order to weigh 1 gram of herb, there must be a weight that is 1 gram. My next thought was that to weigh 40 grams of herbs, I should probably use all the weights to add up to 40 to be most efficient.  I thought that I would probably need a 2 gram weight to weigh the even numbers. But then I thought, could I be more efficient and instead 'make' a 2 gram weight by combining a 3 gram and 1 gram weight? This would be more efficient cause I could also combine 3+1 to make 4. So far I have determined that there must be a 1 and 3 gram weight. This will make it possible to weigh herbs of grams 1 to 4. To weigh a 2 gram herb, we put it together with the 1 gram on one side, then check it with the 3 gram on the other side. So now that I can make 1 to 4, how can I make 5? By this same reasoning, I chose a 9 gram weight. This would allow me to do 9-3-1=5. This gave me ...