SamizdatMath

Do you want to know what the problem is with all that math you think you're "teaching?" It's missing something, and no, it's not "standards," or "aims" or "concision" or cryptocurrency. No, it's missing something far more important. Your math is missing "ambiguity." Let's look at how your textbook is probably teaching area and perimeter. It probably states the definition, and then gives a bunch of cruddy problems where you calculate the area and perimeter of a bunch of rectangles and then moves

Back in the 1980s (before most of you were born), the A & W hamburger restaurant chain tried to go head to head with McDonalds' new "quarter pounder" by creating and marketing a "⅓ pound hamburger." It was a spectacular flop. A research company hired to find the source of the problem found out that half of the people surveyed thought that there was less meat in a ⅓ lb. burger than a ¼ lb. burger because, well, "3 is less than 4." The burger was renamed the "Big Papi" and continued to be sold b

Here's the problem: There are 100 seats on an airplane and 100 people waiting to get on. The first person loses their boarding pass, so they take a random seat on the plane. If the next person finds their seat occupied, they take another random seat. If their seat is free, they sit in it. Question: What is the probability that the 100th person on the plane will sit in their assigned seat? Oh, sure, you can look up the answer and come up with some convoluted or excessively mathematical explanati

This is a seven part investigation into the carbon footprint of different kinds of food and diets. Investigation #1: What We Emit When We Eat: This is a list of 20 different foods, including meats, dairy, vegetables and grains and the amount of carbon released during their production. Students calculate the equivalent in miles driven by a car, as well as the amount of carbon released per ounce. Investigation #2: Students investigate the carbon footprint of three different meals. The first is a s

This is a collection of 36 factor riddles to help your students prepare to factor quadratic equations.

Here's another mathematics investigation straight out of the SamizdatMath laboratory. Yes, the same place which brought you " How to Hack Your Burrito," " What's the Best Way to Fit a 15' Fishing Pole in a 10' Box?" AND "WTF is Survivor Bias and Why Should I Care About It?" now brings you a complete investigation into the age old problem "what's the fastest way to cook 3 steaks in a pan that only holds 2 at a time?" This is a problem that has been circulating around, and it has a fun solution,

This is an activity that investigates the issue of gerrymandering from many different sides; it is not designed to indoctrinate your students into the idea that gerrymandering (or drawing any kind of electoral districts) is "good" or "bad." Rather, it looks at the idea at what are different forms of "fair" representation. By re-framing this as a Dingo vs. Raccoon issue, we can rise above partisan politics and see this as a philosophical argument about what "democracy" really looks like. The firs

First of all, it should not be called the "Pythagorean Theorem," because Pythagoras had nothing to do with inventing or discovering it. The Chinese knew about it hundreds of years before, and the Mesopotamians? Like 1300 years before! Zip Zap.... Okay, this is a really REALLY cool activity that uses the "Pythagorean" Theorem to solve a very important question: how can you ship an 11 foot fishing pole, when the shipping box can't be any more than 10 feet in length? Take some time to scratch you

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

Think about it: the average American eats over 40 slices of pizza a year; if you live to be 80, and assuming you start at around 5 years old, this is 75 years of pizza x 40 slices per year, or 3,000 slices in your lifetime! Since this delicious food is such an important part of our life, doesn't it make sense that we understand everything there is about the economics of buying pizza? This is a series of activities that examines the economics of pizza in several different ways. First, it shows

This is a winter themed variation of Silly Creatures Number Logic Puzzles, a fun little booklet that your students can put together in about 3 minutes and features 2 kinds of objects to decipher. This version involves three different objects to interpret, which will really give them something fun to do and most likely fry their brains by working logically - and because this is something you purchased from me, your kids will also have a chance to make their own puzzles to share with one another.

Note: this is the same as the "winter theme three part number logic puzzles," but with "silly icons" instead of "winter icons." This is a sequel to Silly Creatures Number Logic Puzzles, a fun little booklet that your students can put together in about 3 minutes and features 2 kinds of objects to decipher. This version involves three different objects to interpret, which will really give them something fun to do and most likely fry their brains by working logically - and because this is somethin

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 a collection of 12 different division reasoning problems that require your students to understanding through written explanations. No, it doesn't mean your students are going to explain the long division algorithm by writing about the steps they took to solve the problem. First of all, who cares? Second of all, it doesn't really show a mastery of the concept of division; it only shows they have memorized the steps in an algorithm that is totally unnecessary to memorize in an age of calcu

These are four puzzles that explore the issue of parity, which has to do with the "evenness" and "oddness" of a number. The first two puzzles involve "visual parity," which has to do with how two colors or shapes "match" up to one another. The second two are puzzles that involve numerical parity, neither of which has a solution due to the nature of odd and even numbers. They come in poster form, or you can print them out 4 to a sheet a leave them around for your students to puzzle over. Include

The first U.S. Census was conducted in 1790 to decide on the apportionment of the Congress. The people counted were Free White Males Over !6, who were allowed to vote, White Males Under 16, Free White Females, Enslaved Persons and "Others." Your students will use this data to express relationships between different groups, most significantly the ratio of "Free White Men" to "Enslaved Persons." Please note that this refers to the people who worked as slaves to the current terminology as "Enslaved

This is a wonderful activity which uses a real life paradox to explore how ratios change by adding the same number to the quantities being compared. We start with our friend Bud and his nephew Lou. Bud is 40, Lou is 10, so the ratio of Bud's age to Lou's age is 40:10, or 4:1. 5 years later, Bud is 45, Lou is 15, so now the ratio has changed: their ratio is 45:15, which can be simplified down to 3:1. Using this idea (which was based on a very inappropriate Abbot & Costello routine from long ago)

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