Comments on: The Point Of Spending $40 and 5 Hours Melting Cheese /2011/the-point-of-spending-40-and-5-hours-melting-cheese/ less helpful Fri, 18 Mar 2011 15:20:16 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.2 By: Jerzy /2011/the-point-of-spending-40-and-5-hours-melting-cheese/#comment-280163 Fri, 18 Mar 2011 15:20:16 +0000 /?p=9542#comment-280163 # 32, 34, 35: If you’re not trying to change your eating habits, and body-image issues can be a problem for you, I wouldn’t really advise tracking your weight…

However, there’s a book “The Hacker’s Diet”:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/e4/
…and some of his ideas might perhaps help you track yourself without the negative body-image impact.

He points out that someone with a stable weight will still see a lot of fluctuation in their daily weight measurements, depending on how much water and “solids” are in your system at the moment you happen to weigh yourself that day.

So he basically suggests taking a running average of your daily weight, so that you can see the trend over time instead of taking the daily fluctuations too seriously. The particular way he takes the average is a bit complicated, but even if after each measurement you just take a simple average of the past few weight-ins, it’s probably a decent indication of the trend.

Since you AREN’T trying to change your weight or diet, doing regular measurements of weight/waist and tracking them against a moving average could give you a sense of the natural variation in your measurements. If there’s a particular weight you don’t want to go over, you don’t need to worry if a single day’s weight happens to be higher — only once the moving average gets over that weight limit.

]]> By: S. Narine /2011/the-point-of-spending-40-and-5-hours-melting-cheese/#comment-279207 Thu, 10 Mar 2011 03:33:29 +0000 /?p=9542#comment-279207 Didn’t really know where to leave this comment but I “discovered” Dan about a week ago, and have been hooked ever since. I started doing Concept quizzes last week with our fraction unit. I wanted to know if anyone would be willing to share ideas like the ones on this site for 5th grade math class, decimals, percents, anything. Thanks

]]> By: Sarah /2011/the-point-of-spending-40-and-5-hours-melting-cheese/#comment-279047 Mon, 07 Mar 2011 17:07:13 +0000 /?p=9542#comment-279047 Glad I’m not the only one curious. I just know that sort of tracking is one of the favorite suggestions of diet magazine articles. And I don’t really want to change my habits right now. Not quite yet.

]]> By: R. Wright /2011/the-point-of-spending-40-and-5-hours-melting-cheese/#comment-279042 Mon, 07 Mar 2011 04:31:55 +0000 /?p=9542#comment-279042 #32: For a long time now, I’ve been wanting to keep track of my exact dietary intakes (broken down into carbs, fat, etc.) and daily or at least weekly weight changes, to see what kind of correlations there might be. Heck, it would be interesting just to see if there are any regular patterns in the intakes themselves.

]]> By: Michelle /2011/the-point-of-spending-40-and-5-hours-melting-cheese/#comment-279014 Sat, 05 Mar 2011 20:15:49 +0000 /?p=9542#comment-279014 Roots of polynomials. Cubic ones in particular. They are always on math contest problems in some form or another and elicit such cool patterns. Why can’t that be in my curriculum? Why is it “reserved” for the mathletes? That and a tangent line question that had me going polar coord to rectangular and writing equations of lines, and equations of lines perpendicular to other lines, and I found a solution that was different (ever so slightly) from the published solution. I felt smart in that math geeky sort of way.

]]> By: Sarah /2011/the-point-of-spending-40-and-5-hours-melting-cheese/#comment-279007 Sat, 05 Mar 2011 15:00:22 +0000 /?p=9542#comment-279007 Current puzzle: Is there a way I can track my food intake and changes in my body measurements (weight, but also size) WITHOUT negatively impacting my self-image.

Backstory: I sew. Not that often in recent years, but enough that I actually have records of my measurements. So when my friend asked if I was dieting (because she noticed my weight loss before I did) I was able to compare my measurements to 6 months prior. I’d lost an 1-1.5 inches on all of them. That explains why my clothes aren’t fitting as well. Here I was blaming my laundry decisions.

So I was curious and have decided to track my measurements once every 3 weeks or so. (Note, not too often, because I don’t want to become obsessed by this. It’s a curiosity not a body image issue, but verges enough that I can imagine crossing the line.)

Current story: Two nights ago I measured myself. The next day had multiple “special meals” so I ate more than usual. At the end of the night I felt like my stomach had expanded. Kinda gross, kinda cool. I got home and compared my waist measurement to 24 hours before. Had increased by a whole inch.

So now I’m curious about weight fluctuations. But I’m also positive that if I track it as much as I want to, it will veer to the point of diet and changing my habits in a way that I don’t really want to.

]]> By: MathsUK /2011/the-point-of-spending-40-and-5-hours-melting-cheese/#comment-279004 Sat, 05 Mar 2011 12:19:11 +0000 /?p=9542#comment-279004 I brought in a selection of different size drink containers.
E.g. Carton, Coke can, Red Bull can, Different sized water bottles etc.
(Emptied and washed before class!) Left the labels on!

Then asked then students to order them from largest to smallest. Much debate in the class how to do it, particularly the tall skinny Red Bull compared to the shorter squat Coke.

Finally someone suggests looking at the labels.

Promoted a discussion about mL and L. Also then led nicely in fractions, as all the containers were a proportion of a liter, 1/5, 1/4, 1/3*, 1/2.

* The coke can is marked as 330mL, which is not quite a third of a liter. Though can mention about rounding and accuracy here.

Main problem was only having one set of bottles! So now going to collect more sets over time.

]]> By: Kyle /2011/the-point-of-spending-40-and-5-hours-melting-cheese/#comment-279001 Sat, 05 Mar 2011 02:34:06 +0000 /?p=9542#comment-279001 @RWW I’m getting ready to go over square root equations next week. I’m interested in how the “body cooling” water activity worked out for you. Id like to introduce that topic to my class in a different manner than just notes then homework. Anyone else have suggestions?

]]> By: Dan Goldner /2011/the-point-of-spending-40-and-5-hours-melting-cheese/#comment-279000 Sat, 05 Mar 2011 02:13:11 +0000 /?p=9542#comment-279000 These responses are so much fun to read. Here’s mine: a standard introductory optimization problem is “what’s the largest rectangular area you can enclose with a fence of total length P.” The standard approach starts by setting A = LW and P = 2L+2W, then getting A in one variable and setting A’ to zero. My puzzle is: it seems to me that since A=LW and P=2L+2W is symmetric (in the sense that the labels L & W can be swapped without changing anything), that there can’t really be any other answer than L=W. But if I said that to my students and they asked me to explain I’d be stumped. So I’m trying to write a proof that the max area is L=W, that, say, my students could understand, based on symmetry and not on the derivative. Maybe its screamingly obvious to one of you, but don’t post the explanation here — I want to work this out for myself!

]]> By: Craig /2011/the-point-of-spending-40-and-5-hours-melting-cheese/#comment-278902 Fri, 04 Mar 2011 01:53:13 +0000 /?p=9542#comment-278902 Hey Dan, thanks for all the hard work you put in making this stuff. I teach a grade 4/5 class, and we took it another direction by thinking of the blocks of cheese in terms of fractions. Here is our work:

http://teachingparadox.edublogs.org/2011/03/04/math-and-cheese/

Thanks again!

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