Friday, April 23, 2010

Read an article from Math Plus Magazine OnLine Browse through the magazine and chose an article. Post the name and author of your article here. If someone has already chosen your article then you must make another choice. (No two students can report on the same article). For now I just want the article name and author. You will read your articles next week and prepare an oral presentation for the class (complete with mathematical explanations). Rubrics for this project will be posted on Monday, April 26th.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Solving systems of equations

Visit SOLVING A SYSTEM OF EQUATIONS BY GRAPHING and complete the tutorial. Write a reflection of the tutorial here. Hand in the completed exercises from the tutorial tomorrow in class. For more help with graphing quadratic functions by hand visit PurpleMath.com
For help with graphing quadratic functions on your graphing calculator visit MathBits.com


For your reflection consider:

Was the tutorial easy to follow?
Did the tutorial help you?
Were the examples good representations of real world problems?

Try to find a real world situation that would involve applying a system of equations to solve. Share it with your classmates here.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Why does a negative * a negative = a positive

This week I was on the phone with my mom discussing the difference between teaching math conceptually verses procedurally. She argued that some math procedures have no conceptual base.

My arguement was that the nice thing about math is that everything you do is based on a counting concept. So, she brougt up multiplying negatives, arguing that this rule has no conceptual base.


I disagreed....give an example of what my proof was by posting the reason why
-2 * -2 = 4. Show the math if you can