Math Man

A semester long multi-disciplinary project created by Mr. McDevitt that revolves around a typical first year Algebra curriculum. Students will create their own small business, write linear equations to model their cost, revenue, and profit, represent their equations as graphs and in tabular form, and use systems of equations to find the break-even point for their business. Finally students will have to present their business model to a venture capitalist.

This activity, designed for first year Algebra students, shows a practical, relevant application for linear equations. Students will model the cost of a monthly cable bill and model the cost of a streaming device. Students will solve a system of equations to help decide which TV viewing experience is right for them, and when the steaming package will have paid for itself.

In this activity by Mr. McDevitt, students will graph data that compares a MLB player’s season home run total with his age. Students will use regression to find the best fitting function for the data and graph the function by finding the vertex. Students will also interpret the vertex. We will use the quadratic formula and compare to the x-intercepts of our graph and finally make a prediction about a current player's career.

This 21st century based, real world math activity, will give students the opportunity to make a difference at their school and in their world. Students will work in pairs to discover the economic and environmental impacts of installing faucet aerators at their school. Students will use linear modeling, solve linear equations, and systems of linear equations in an attempt at persuading school leadership to conserve water. If you are looking to make math fun, engaging, and relevant Math Man bel

Want a real life application of Algebra? Want your students to take responsibility for their grade? This project created by the Math man has students write the simplified variable expression that can be used to calculate their grade based on a given weighting system. Students will write the grade expression for all of their courses and program Microsoft Excel with these expressions. Students will now have a personalized grade book they can use the whole year round to figure out their grade.

This is a take on the award winning matching game Spot It! For each of the thirty one cards included you will find that any two cards have one and only one solution that is the same. Each card features six multi-step linear equations or solutions. Play in pairs, groups, or as a class and challenge students to find the one match that exists between any two cards.

This activity created by the Math Man will give your students an opportunity to investigate, extend, generalize, and create patterns. Students will look at a pattern and use numerical and visual reasoning to extend the pattern and discuss subsequent functional behavior. Students will write a function that could model the patterns perimeter and total number of lines. Finally students will create their own pattern.

This is a standard deck of 52 playing cards where instead of the four suits you have the four ways of representing a function, and instead of giving the number of each card students have to figure out the card number by finding the slope. With these cards students can play games they already know and enjoy and do some algebra at the same time. These cards deal strictly with linear functions.

Looking for hands on learning, this is the activity for you. In this engaging activity students will act as the participants / researchers of an experiment, and have fun doing it. Students will write the linear equation that will model how long it takes to do a audience wave with a certain amount of people. This activity allows students to create the data, making the lesson all the more engaging and worthwhile.

In this activity students will decide which graph would be used to match the specifics of a story about a fictional hike up a mountain. Students will decide on how to label each axis, interpret slopes as a rate of change, and write their own story that would match one of the given graphs.