Comments on: [Makeover] Bedroom Area

By: Christine

Christine — Fri, 21 Jun 2013 00:05:06 +0000

So when I moved to the city and had to rent a (2-bdrm) flat with a friend, the day we moved in she arrived earlier than I did – and chose the bigger room! If we had of flipped a coin to determine who got the bigger room and I’d lost I would have been ok with it. I was annoyed because we shared the rent payments equally, yet she more area (I never measured her room to calculate exactly how much more she got) but I always felt that we should have been paying rent based on the area of the rooms (assuming all other space shared equally!)

By: Collaborative Planning | Maths is Not a Spectator Sport

Collaborative Planning | Maths is Not a Spectator Sport — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 22:11:52 +0000

[…] can’t all be geniuses like […]

By: pete capewell

pete capewell — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 21:11:00 +0000

Hi Dan

A couple of years ago I was inspired by your TED talk and the three-part videos to put this together:

http://mathsurgery.wikispaces.com/plans+and+elevations+-+room+makeover

It doesn’t quite have the same Rodney and Emile comparing areas idea, but explores a lot of the same math and concentrates a bit more on estimation and problem solving creatively.

What do you think? How might I improve it?

By: Roger Gemberling

Roger Gemberling — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 12:34:20 +0000

Here is another idea to consider. It is located at

http://rgemberling.blogspot.com/2013/06/make-over-monday.html

By: suehellman

suehellman — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 11:48:01 +0000

I’ve been thinking about my struggling math students and what I’d want them to learn/do/become better at if I stripped out the numbers and asked such an open-ended question. I think the goal would be for them to appraise the problem — to think about a range of good possibilities and potential issues & to turn off the urge to apply a memorized formula to solve the question that they assume is embedded in the shapes and numbers. (Because most of my students probably wouldn’t even see the units in the original, they question they’d end up answering wouldn’t be the one that’s truly asked.)

So they wouldn’t go completely ‘blank’, this is how I’d start: what questions might you ask Rodney and Emile to determine the sizes of their rooms? what if they can give you any information EXCEPT numbers?how would that information help you? what if they’re terrible at drawing? how can we decide which of our questions will yield ‘significant’ information for solving the problem? how can we decide when we’ve asked enough questions?

When I revealed the measurements, I’d ask them which of their questions would have led them to the significant information and how many of them might have missed that if we hadn’t taken the time to appraised the problem first.

I hope this would model for them a process of ‘questioning the question’ and give them a way into problems that at first seem baffling — to look at everything and fish out the most ‘significant’ information before rushing to formula matching.

By: James Key

James Key — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:30:24 +0000

Rodney and Emile’s parents decided to renovate their bedrooms. They are getting brand new carpet, as well as new baseboards. Whose room costs more to renovate?

By: l hodge

l hodge — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 13:01:03 +0000

Here is my attempt.

By: l hodge

l hodge — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:55:10 +0000

If we assume the diagrams are drawn to scale, why not just measure them with a ruler and avoid the unit issue?

I like the carpet suggestion. How about two rooms of more obviously different sizes and two different carpet samples of size one square ft & 1 square meter (to scale) with prices shown. Now it is visually more of an area problem as they have the 1 square foot and 1 square meter carpet samples to look at. Also there is a bit more room for debate on which room will cost more to carpet. One room is bigger, but one carpet is more expensive per unit, but the units for the price are different, etc.

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 05:04:06 +0000

Another context could be moving overseas (from the US to a metric country) and trying to work out if his/her new bedroom will be as big as the one back home (this allows for the change in units). The new bedroom information could be provided by way of a floor plan (download one from a real estate website somewhere). The existing bedroom information could be provided as either length and width or total square feet. If you’re evil, a photograph of a bedroom with an object of known size in the photo (introduction to perspective)

It all depends on what sort of skills the students have and what you want them to gain from the task.

By: Todd Huntington

Todd Huntington — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 04:07:09 +0000

Extension possibly more realistic:

Rooms that are not rectangular or at least require some dissections into common shapes.