Comments on: [Makeover] Postage Rates

By: Dan Meyer

Dan Meyer — Sun, 22 Sep 2013 09:21:39 +0000

@Zach, like it. Gives a reason to look backwards and forwards.

By: Zach Lair

Zach Lair — Sat, 21 Sep 2013 23:25:16 +0000

Instead of a wedding invitation, change it to a graduation invitation. Have the kids estimate how many invitations they would have to mail out. They could then calculate the cost of their invitations. You could also have them calculate the cost that their parents/grandparents paid for their graduation invitations.

By: dy/dan » Blog Archive » [Makeover] Ferris Wheel

dy/dan » Blog Archive » [Makeover] Ferris Wheel — Mon, 05 Aug 2013 16:35:09 +0000

[…] a reason to give a damn. Here, as with our last Makeover Monday, you're asked to create a graph simply because we said so that's why. There isn't any sense that a […]

By: Shaun Errichiello

Shaun Errichiello — Thu, 01 Aug 2013 06:28:11 +0000

thanks for the problem. I have been thinking about this all day! Here are my thoughts on the lesson. I haven’t finished, but I like the work around this problem.

http://putonyourmathgoggles.blogspot.com/2013/07/so-you-want-to-mail-letter-lets-do-math.html

By: pete capewell

pete capewell — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 22:13:39 +0000

How about world records for athletics or swimming in the context of setting a ‘Big Goal’ for an aspiring athlete that wants to be the world’s-best in 2020?

Field events give increasing step functions for record distances; races meanwhile give decreasing ones for record times. Nice to have the choice?

With the venue for the summer Olympics in the final phase of the bid process we could tell a story leading to Madrid, Istanbul or Tokyo…
(http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/sports/olympics/madrid-shines-with-pitch-for-2020-olympics.html?_r=0)

By: Scott Hills

Scott Hills — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 02:06:49 +0000

I don’t do stamps when discussing step-functions in my own class. Knowing my audience will include 14-17 year olds I look at speeding ticket rates. We have a resource officer on campus and getting him to stop by sometime after the first 15 minutes generally isn’t a problem (at least not as the day is starting).

I get the driving students, who are generally the most jaded of the Algebra 1 kids, to answer if they’ve ever gotten a speeding ticket. (I’ve never had a class with driving age students who haven’t, btw.) then we discuss, with the officer’s assistance, the local speeding ticket rates (and if he isn’t available that hour, I have a copy of the chart)

I’ve had more than one kid remark that speeding just isn’t worth it (and for the doubters, a follow-up of similar rate increases to car insurance generally is convincing)

By: l hodge

l hodge — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 01:25:10 +0000

I might go with something that is a little more personal that takes a little thinking to figure out the steps. Maybe the number of drivers in your family or the number of schools attended by members of your family as a function of year. Then ask how the graphs would change for families with twins, large numbers of children, large ranges of ages. Or go backwards by providing the step graph and asking questions about the family.

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 01:03:00 +0000

Mary, that’s a great context that is certainly not pseudo.

I went with a wedding because it was the first thing that came to my head and I knew I could easily make a few jokes and hook students in. Yeah, it’s a little forced but I think it gets the job done much more than the graph of data.

As for stamps being a small fraction of a wedding cost… Students likely have no idea about that. It’s a good discussion to have. If you have to drop $500 on postage for a wedding and then tell your students “that will probably be the cheapest part of the wedding” I think it will turn some heads. There’s also the “forever” stamp issue which is another important point to discuss as well.

Mathematically, my question remains: When in the world do we ever really need a step graph? Sure, it is more technically correct since we’re not talking a continuous function. But what’s so important about it?

By: Mary Dooms

Mary Dooms — Mon, 29 Jul 2013 22:40:27 +0000

If a change of context is acceptable for motivation, why not frame the problem in terms of the federal minimum wage? It hasn’t been increased since 2009. Based on a linear model, what do you guess the president is proposing, what is Congress is proposing? What would you propose?

http://www.dol.gov/whd/minwage/chart.htm

Just a thought.

By: Andy Brown

Andy Brown — Mon, 29 Jul 2013 22:27:47 +0000

Might we all stand to look back in time to the days of the Pony Express and other happenings in U.S. history? We might get involved with inflation-deflation too. Well it’s a different take on prove-you-can tasks.