SamizdatMath

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 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

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

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.