You can create:
- A collection of division from the world around YOU
- Comparisons between different models of division
How?
This activity is similar to our Multiplication expedition. However, we don't have an online gallery yet, so here is the list of some division models for you to use, in text form. It came from a discussion on the Living Math mailing list. I hope people running this activity will add to the model list and also illustrate it with examples from their lives!
"Melancholia" by Durer; an additive magic square is on the wall
You can create:
- Magic squares and circles
How?
A multiplicative magic square is filled with numbers in such a clever way that their products along any row or columns are the same. The obvious activity is to try and create such an object. A more advanced math activity is
Video: Monty Python's Powers of Ten
You can create:
- A collage or a slide show with your own sequence of powers
- A representation of your place in the Universe
picture
You can create:
- Item/idea1
- Item/idea2
How?
This is the problem Robyn is doing with her small groups: http://mathnotations.blogspot.com/2008/09/remainders-and-number-theory-challenges.html What can people author there? Maybe they can pose their own remainder problems or lemmas. Maybe, as they pose such problems, they can use remainders as representations for something (e.g. 12 notes, 7 rainbow colors, shapes, letters and so on) and create representational art or music out of their problems. Robyn thinks if we can come up with a good graphical representation of LCMs, it can be interesting.
Why?
Because... (reasons the activity is valuable to people)
As you go
- Things to notice
- Ideas to explore
Higher and deeper
- Connections to other topics, math and general culture included
- Deeper explorations within topics
How to join the Family Multiplication Study
0 - Read the Family Study Manifesto
1 - Join the FMS email group. This is how you will receive study news and announcements. You can set the email frequency options for the group here: http://groups.google.com/group/multiplicationstudy/subscribe
These plans are significantly modified from their original version, based on the questions and comments from our first three runs. For example, originally I intended for people to use Flickr and other photo hosting sites for their images, but the number of people who asked how to share pictures led me to believe it's better to implement picture upload. Here is the current list of software features, in the order we plan to program them. Does it make sense? What other features would you like?
1. "Wikiblog" structure for activity housing: WYSIWYG editing of activities by everybody with version control (wiki-like part), individual comments (blog-like part) - done
2. The ability to upload pictures as you create wikiblog articles or add comments to them - done, beta
3. Participant, activity, comment database architecture - done, beta
4.
This is the place to collect all things that go wrong for us. It is governed by Phil, the prince of insufficient light and the ruler of Heck. Phil collects things that aren't quite tortures, but strong annoyances, difficulties and problems. If you have a problem with the study, do write Phil. He'll respond!
A few representative examples...
"We experimented with both the polyrhythms and the mathlexicon. Both were sort of odd somehow for us. I couldn't do any polyrhythms, although my husband could do them. My son was in
- The Family Study community supports each participant family in creating their own beautiful, meanigful, useful and fun mathematics.
- Families can choose or create their own activities.
- Families can adapt any activity to their own levels, styles and interests. Activities are designed to be easily adaptable to different levels and styles.
- Activities are designed to support multiple representations of mathematics: text, graphs, formulas, pictures, stories, tables, manipulatives, gestures, and so on.
- Every member of every family has "executive powers" within activities: plan and decide what to do next, create ideas and examples, pose problems, ask questions and so on.
- Study history is freely available on the Web to help future participants. That includes questions and answers, activity descriptions
I haven't done this yet, but heard about it from my fellow math teacher at WIldcat Community FreeSchool. I think we can build on it somehow, and turn it into a logic game.
There is a puzzle in Alice in Puzzleland (by Raymond Smullyan) in which you encounter John, or perhaps his identical twin brother. You know that one of them always lies and the other always tells the truth, but not which is which. What one question (of just 3 words) can you ask to find out whether you're talking to John or his brother?
I think Sarah told the kids the answer-question. Then, wanting to help them see why it was so, she made little slips of paper that said John, Twin, Liar, Truth-teller, and had the kids pick two (a person and a status) and answer the question from lots of different perspectives. She said they had trouble staying in character w
We had two math clubs this past week, because the third got snowed in. The general idea for this club activity was to make up our own elements, describe their properties, draw cartoons to represent them, and form molecules out of them.
To get inspired in the initial design part, we looked at The Periodic Table book illustrated by Basher, an offbeat British artist. We also browsed his web site Basher World. The first task was to make element names out of our names. Club members used typical element word parts to form element names such as Kellainium, Madisonin, Joshicon, or Hydrotom.
