Comments on: What Can You Do With This: The $6400 Question

By: Parks and Recreation Pool | WNCP Orchestrated Experiences for High School Math

Tue, 02 Jul 2013 13:23:45 +0000

[…] the video from Dan’s blog and play it for your […]

By: Cliff

Cliff — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 08:13:28 +0000

Ok, one of the big ideas that I can come up with is What are the possible first bets so that if they continued the “double or nothing” idea they would eventually end up at 6400 dollars?

That’s not an easy question, but leads toward a great idea about numeracy. The importance of prime factorization and uniqueness is something that continually passes our students by.

We hope that soon students would understand that to find all the possible solutions they should repeatedly divide 6400 by 2. This idea that they would surely come up with by themselves is one of the great ideas in algebra. That division is the opposite of multiplication is often taught, but multiplication by a half is often neglected. fractional multiplication causes problems, but it shouldn’t. Especially multiplication by quantities of the form 1/n.

This could lead in all sorts of questions, depending on the question asked.

By: Dan Meyer

Dan Meyer — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 01:27:03 +0000

Oh nice! That’s fun to hear.

By: Neel Patel

Neel Patel — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 00:52:28 +0000

Dan, this clip was brilliant. I used it that first week back from break – 98% of my students were hooked and actually were doing some math!!! Just brilliant.

By: Jeffery Heap

Jeffery Heap — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 22:32:00 +0000

All great shows, television *gasp* is slowly getting better? Great blog sir!

By: Carico

Carico — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 18:23:20 +0000

I will have to check out the show. Sounds like it would be funny and I love a good laugh

By: John Spencer

John Spencer — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 12:30:49 +0000

Finally, someone agrees. The best show on television. 30 Rock and The Office were both great. “Were” is the key. Now, it’s Parks and Recreation and Modern Family.

Anyway, I enjoy your blog. I’ve been reading it for some time. I enjoy the way you bridge the personal and the classroom all with the focus on learning at all times.

By: Dan Meyer

Dan Meyer — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 22:45:15 +0000

@D.C., empirically speaking, The Office and 30 Rock have both had uneven seasons while Parks and Recreation has had the best sophomore season since, well, The Office. Regardless, the fact that my top three ranking, as of today reads 1. Parks and Recreation 2. The Office 3. 30 Rock with Community somewhere in the top eight, bodes really well for NBC right now.

By: Dustin

Dustin — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 15:40:15 +0000

Dan,
I absolutely will spend as much time as possible going through your old posts. I have just finished my first semester of teaching Algebra II and Geometry after being an engineer for 15 years and am enthralled with your ideas and your approach. In fact, I am hoping it is not too late to tear down everything I did during the first semester and try to use your concept-based assessment techniques in the second semester.

Thank you.

By: D.C. Hess

D.C. Hess — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 08:56:50 +0000

I would beg to differ. 30 Rock is the best comedy on American television.

What can you do with it? How ’bout using it as an opener for a discussion about the ramifications of non-commercial gambling? (For a social studies slant).