LessYakMoreMath

This investigation give students the opportunity to discover how standard deviation relates to normal distribution. Materials: Dice, access to books or white boards Teacher Moves: Students start investigation straight away, no instruction required. Students should have already learned about how to calculate standard deviation as a measure of spread. He students will discover that in normally distributed data sets, approximately 67% of the data lies within one standard deviation.

Students discover how binomial products are expanded, based upon the area model of multiplication. The task allows students collaboratively to extend their knowledge of distributive property in multiplication to algebraic binomials. Once students work out binomial expansion themselves they are challenged to create area models from quadratic trinomials (doing factorising without realising it!) No teacher instruction required. Less Yak. More Math.