SamizdatMath

This activity uses the results of the 2016 Presidential Election, as well as all the previous US Elections, to determine if it was, as one ignoramus called it "a landslide." By examining previous election results based on their electoral college and "popular" vote, students will see for themselves using factual data that "landslides" in US Presidential Elections are fairly unique events, and then decide for themselves using the actual facts as compiled by the US Government whether the results of

This is a set of activities that uses the raw data from each state in the 2016 United States Presidential Election, including the number of votes for each candidate, the number of "eligible" voters and the number of voters who "did not vote." What students will find out that if "did not vote" was a candidate, it would have "won" by one of the largest landslides in history. This is based on data used on the following website: https://brilliantmaps.com/did-not-vote/ The first activity explains som

This is an activity that analyzes the legitimacy of the "electoral college" system of voting in the United States, and whether it really is based on "one person, one vote." It uses census data from 2010 to show that when it comes to influence on presidential elections, states with smaller populations have a disproportional effect on the outcomes. The activity begins by explaining the workings of the electoral college system, describing how each state gets one elector for each house member, plus

This is a set of activities which develops the idea of odds and how they can be applied to understanding why the lottery is, at best, a sucker's bet. It takes a list of ten different things that can happen, from rolling a set of snake eyes using two dice (1/36) to being born with an extra finger or toe (1/500) to winning an Oscar (1/11,500) to drowning in a bathtub (1/850,000) to becoming president of the US (1/10,000,000) to winning the Mega-Millions or Powerball lotteries (which have slightly

Here is an interesting fact: did you know that most castles built during the middle ages were made from wood? It's a true fact! But you're probably thinking: wait, if most castles were made of wood, how come when you google the word "castle," all you see are stone edifices? The answer is: survivor bias! Think about it: you build a wood castle, and over the years, what's the thing that threatens it most? FIRE! So all those wood castles burnt to the ground over the last thousand years, while the

This is an incredible, absolutely wonderful investigation that will get your students working with ratios to pursue a worthy goal: to make the best bubble juice that makes the longest lasting bubbles! All you need to do are three ingredients: dishwashing liquid, glycerin (available at pharmacies or online) and di-hydrogen oxide, better known as "water." Your students mix different amounts of the the three ingredients together and test to see how long the bubbles last. But the activity doesn't e

This is an activity that uses data collected by the Southern Poverty Law Center tracking the use of Confederate symbols in the form of monuments, courthouses, schools, and other public amenities, including parks, highways and holidays. The activity takes place in 3 parts: The first part is that students assemble and label a timeline that tracks the rise of Confederate symbols from 1860 to the present day (2016.) In the second part, students match dates to 10 different events in Civil Rights h

This is one in a continuing series of activities that takes mathematics and applies it to social issue, including Food Waste and Mathematics: From Farm to Table to Dump, Mathematics, Demographics & Slavery: The 1790 Census in Ratio, Percents & Graphs, MathBusters: Percentage Practice to Analyze 2016 Election Results, and Statistics, Histograms and Lies Presidential Candidates Tell. In this case, we are looking at how far food must travel in order to make it from where it is produced to the place

Here's a very uncomfortable fact: it takes 4 pounds of potatoes to make 1 pound of potato chips. That means that for every 1 pound bag of potato chips you eat, 3 pounds of potatoes have to be thrown away. What a waste of food! This is a series of activities that looks at the hidden world of food waste. It includes a look at how much food is wasted as it is "processed" into finished products like french fries and potato chips. It also includes mathematical activities where students calculate how

This is an activity designed to help our students learn about the importance of rounding off numbers after they have been divided and using them as a basis for comparison. One of the things our students should learn is the importance of rounding numbers to that they are easier to handle and to cite as a statistic. For example, to say "for the same amount of taxpayer money that Donald Trump has spent on golfing vacations to his Mar-a-Lago resort we could have paid for 9041.59132007 Meals on Whee

Greetings phrens: this is a 41 page guide to how to think about the basic measures of central tendency in statistics (mean, median, mode and range) beyond the basic recitation of "here's how to do it." If you think about it, statistics is one of the most important and relevant area of mathematics that we teach. It is powerful because it allows us to take large amounts of data and and distilling it down into just a few numbers. However, very often these numbers are either irrelevant, non-repres

This is a comprehensive investigation of basic measures of central tendency (mean, median and mode) using a hands-on approach. This investigation occurs as a set of hands-on experiments that groups of students conduct using a set of 7 cups, Students start by filling the cups with water (or sand, or beans, or whatever you like) to various levels, and then re-arranging the position and levels of the cup in order to find the mean, median and mode. By focusing the students' attention on the concept

This is an old brain teaser that someone told me, and which I shortened and clarified, as well as added clues for your students to use, as well as three different explanations for how to solve it. Basically, the problem goes like this: you have 7 people who want to find the average of their salaries. The only problem is that no one wants to tell anyone how much they earn. How will you find the average without anybody stating their actual salary? I've run this problem by all my techie type frie

This is one of an occasional series of mondo-tough problems that use small numbers (or no numbers at all!) Here’s how it works: we all teach our students how to take a group of numbers and calculate the range, mean, median and mode. Seems pretty simple, and our students tired of it damned quickly. Can you blame them? It’s just “do what the teacher told me to do, and then write the answer here...” kind of busywork. But what if we were to switch the tables on our students: let’s give them t

Abstract: Zombies are a popular figure in pop culture/entertainment and they are usually portrayed as being brought about through an outbreak or epidemic. Consequently, we model a zombie attack, using biological assumptions based on popular zombie movies. We introduce a basic model for zombie infection, determine equilibria and their stability, and illustrate the outcome with numerical solutions. We then refine the model to introduce a latent period of zombification, whereby humans are infected

Do you have a bucket full of plastic links in one of your bins and wondering what can you possibly do with a huge pail of these colorful plastic links. Your prayers have been answered! These are 10 different measurement cards, in 8 x 10 as well as 5 x 8 that you can print out, laminate and set up "estimation stations" which your kids will enjoy. They will estimate the length of their hand, and then measure it, as well as their foot, arm and around their head. They'll measure the longest and sh

The game is simple, but the strategy will keep your students engaged for hours: roll 3 dice, choose 2, add the numbers together and cover up that number on the board. Except things aren't so easy: if you roll a 1, 1 and 6, should you combine 1 + 1 = 2, or 1 + 6 = 7? This game opens up some nice opportunities to discuss winning strategies using probability. A follow-up game, "The Big Cover Up," also uses 3 dice, but to make things even more fun, players have to choose between combining 1, 2 or 3

Since the first modern Olympics in 1896, runners in the 100 meter sprint have been setting records on a regular basis, earning the title of the "fastest human on earth." How long can these records be broken? Will there eventually be a runner who can do the 100 meter sprint in just a few seconds? This activity shows students how the change from measuring time from tenths of a second to hundredths of a second allowed more records to be broken, and that by graphing these records, the new records ca

Are you interested in developing your students' understanding of decimals and statistics using baseball? This activity focuses on the skills of computing and comparing batting averages, as well as seeing what effect a "hit" can have on a player's average; that is, a player with fewer "at bats" will get a bigger "bump" from a hit, than a player with many at bats. This activity encourages students to see that a single statistic cannot tell you everything about the quality of a baseball player.