Comments on: What Can You Do With This: The Italian Job

By: Peterhorn33

Peterhorn33 — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 21:21:48 +0000

I love the idea of using popular culture inside the classroom. It definitely can get the job done with respect to having the students “buy in” to the fact that Math is a HUGE part of everyday life. I reference pop culture a lot in my lessons, For example, in Alg 1 I use Michael Jackson holding his baby out of a window to help teach slope ( Superman can fly straight up and save the baby but I have to RUN to the hotel and RISE in the elevator). One of the biggest pluses to these kinds of problems and references hasn’t been mentioned here yet. Not only do these ideas get the students interested but they also give everyone in the class a common reference point to fall back on. I am teaching Algebra 2 in summer school and one of my former students (Brian) is in my class. When another student had a misunderstanding about slope Brian spoke up and said “don’t you know the Superman and Michael Jackson story?” I haven’t taught Brian for two and a half years and he still remembered that stupid story and the lesson that went with it. Giving students the kind of experience you are talking about here with The Italian Job allows them to make a connection that will be remembered far longer than any lecture would.
Thank you for the great ideas.

By: Dan on Dan: Storytelling « Willy Kjellstrom: Portfolio & Blog

Dan on Dan: Storytelling « Willy Kjellstrom: Portfolio & Blog — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 23:17:48 +0000

[…] The material covered during this setup is only peripherally related to the lesson.Â Watching The Italian Job isn’t related to decimals and measurement. It’s all about elucidating the central […]

By: Kari

Kari — Fri, 21 May 2010 05:13:16 +0000

*”not thinking”, rather than nit.

By: Kari

Kari — Fri, 21 May 2010 05:11:23 +0000

@morgante: I teach everything from algebra 1 to AP. My AP students are the most frequent culprits! I tend to think, actually, that it’s almost our own (us teachers’) fault, and I lump the science teachers in there. Story problems, labs, and real lfe applcations are just so mch easier in metric that we use it mch more often as we go higher. And if we’re in a program that teaches skills and nit thinking, then we’re training kids that “the number after the decimal is a count of the next-smaller measurement.”.

I teach AP Stats and we do a lot with Normal distributions of heights, so we start talking about the mean and the st dev and my kiddies get all garbled trying to flip between decimal notation and feet-inches notation. I was thinking about this with dan’s height of 6.6 feet and how that becomes 6 feet 6 inches–a very common type of statement among my advanced, college-bound, calculus-taking seniors. Usually my next comment on that is, “oh, so, six-and-a-half feet.” it’s usually “only” a minute or two before someone realizes that we just establshed that 6.6 equals 6.5 and we have to go back.

By: Culminating Artifact Post – “Paper” | The 21st Century Classroom

Wed, 19 May 2010 20:50:04 +0000

[…] the ideas from Dan Meyer’s “What Can You Do With This?” blog entries, including “What Can You Do With This: Italian Job,” “Who Cares? – The Wager,” “What Can You Do With This: Water […]

By: Gauthier

Gauthier — Fri, 14 May 2010 12:35:51 +0000

Great post, and comments too.

A quick look at the Leica website shows that the Disto (the measuring device shown here) has a function to switch between metric and imperical units.

I’ve never used one, but I would assume as you switch to imperical units, the ‘decimals’ would be base 12.

Of course, being French, I can’t help but agree that the metric system makes more intuitive sense, at least to our limited brains!

By: David Cox

David Cox — Thu, 13 May 2010 21:00:25 +0000

Silver
Are you sure that the scale doesn’t show the oz after the decimal? For example: could the weight register 9.15 to show 9 lb 15oz? When a pitcher enters a ball game it shows that he has thrown 45.2 innings so far this year. Everyone knows that the .2 means 2/3.

By: silver

silver — Thu, 13 May 2010 19:15:07 +0000

@ Morgante Pell

Actually, it’s a more common mistake than you think. Here’s an example that I ran into just yesterday:

I brought my toddler son to the doctor’s office yesterday. He stood on the scale and it fluttered between 31 and 30.8 before finally saying that he’s 30.8lbs.

The nurse enters my sons stats into the computer and prints out a sheet that gives me information about his growth percentiles.

It’s not until after I leave the office that I look at the sheet and notice the nurse’s error. Rather than putting in that he’s 30.8lbs, she puts in that he’s 30lbs, 8oz. Incidentally, at my son’s age, that weight difference is about 3 percentiles.

So a nurse, who presumably has a bachelors degree and had to take at least one math course in college made that kind of error. I’m sure if you asked her how many ounces are in a pound, that she wouldn’t answer “10,” yet she fails to realize that decimals on that scales are not the same as ounces.

I wonder if the doctor ever notices that patient weights are never in the 9-15 ounce range.

The obvious solution (to both the length and weight issue) is to switch to the metric system.

By: Dan Meyer

Dan Meyer — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 14:19:42 +0000

Chris: To be clear: the frame in the boat is a decoy, the safe fell into the canal.

Right on.

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 06:10:43 +0000

To be clear: the frame in the boat is a decoy, the safe fell into the canal.

@curmudgeon, you are not alone. And they should standard-ize a pantload, I use it constantly. Sounds like another potential WCYDWT problem!

Love this stuff! Keep it up!