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 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

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

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.